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The Shameless Diary 

of an 

Explorer 

By Robert Dunn 

With illustrations from photographs 
by the author 




New York 
The Outing Publishing Company 

M C M VI I 






V'] 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two CoDles Received 

JUN 8 190^ 

CLASS A }0(d„ No. 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1907, by 
THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY 



A II rights reserved 



^ 



""^> 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Master Motive . . . . i 

II Geographical ii 

III The Outfit, Human and Material . . 19 

IV The Cayuse Game . . . . .26 
V The Forbidden Tundra . . . -38 

VI The Vanishing Ford . . . -54 

VII Last Straws 67 

VIII Disaster and the Stoic Professor . . 88 

IX I Break Loose Twice .... 100 

X Pleurisy and the Pass . . . .113 

XI Red Flesh for Kings of France . .129 

XII Under the Smiling Snow. . . -147 

XIII Butting Blindly into Storm . . .161 

XIV Remorse and Salt 181 

XV Kicks, Discoveries and a Dream . . 194 

XVI What is Courage? 214 

XVII Putting Your House in Order . . 225 

XVIII Ravens and Doomed Horses . . . 234 

XIX Willow Bushes to Aquatics . . . 252 

XX Swift Water into Great Glaciers . . 272 

XXI Humanity and Happiness .... 289 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Mt. McKinley, 20,300 feet, from the northwest, valley 
of the Tatlathna River, Kuskokwim watershed, 
August 15, 1903 Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

**The beasts coasted with the shale, bracing their legs as 
we tore about hallooing and beating them into line." 
(Traveling through the foot-hill country.) . . 144 

"Some attempt has been made to sort the stuflF, but it's 
rather hopeless. . . . The real Alpine thing, 
this." (First camp on the "Front Range," Mt. Mc- 
Kinley altitude 7,500 feet.) . . . . .170 

"The white, crackly desert . where we trudged 

for hours, seeming not to move." (Ascending Peter's 
Glacier, Mt. McKinley.). ..... 196 

"The glacier bowed east. Ridged, pinnacled ice, mass- 
ing into a white Niagara." (Rounding the great west 
cornerofMt. McKinley.) ..... 200 

"We climbed the serac by a crafty combination of snow 
pinnacles." (The great ice-fall of Peter's Glacier.) . 204 

"The tent specked the vast polar plain of the upper 
glacier." (Camp on Peter's Glacier, altitude 7,500 
feet, under the "pink cliffs.") . . . .214 

"We could dig a seat now, on the corniced brow of Fred's 
rock ridge." (Resting at 10,000 feet on Mt. McKin- 
ley.) .228 



VUl 



Illustrations 



"The zenith suddenly petrified into a big, pinkish-yellow 
strip of rock, offending the sight as a thunder-clap 
might have deafened ... I saw it was hope- 
less." (From the highest camp on Mt. McKinley. 
The wall that checked us.) 240 

Our highest camp on Mt. McKinley, altitude, 10,800 feet. 
Mt. Foraker in the distance, altitude 17,000 feet. 
Slopes of Mt. Hunter to the left 250 

The steep southwestern shoulder of Mt. McKinley (much 
foreshortened), our objective point. The **pink 
cliffs" to the left 260 



The Shameless Diary 
of an Explorer 

CHAPTER I 

THE MASTER MOTIVE 

This is the story of a failure. I think that success 
would have made it no more worth telling. It is 
about an exploring party, the sort that so often 
fails. . . . 

Fountains of youth, or eldorados, or wider realms 
for cross and conscience — these seemed to lure a 
younger world to unknown regions. To-day men 
explore for the iron crown of science; they say 
that they do, at least. 

But I believe that neither biology to-day, nor gold 
nor the creeds of old, have ever been the explorer's 
master motive. His real ardor is more profound. 
It has revealed and civilized our sphere. It stirs 
the thirst to discover and subdue which vests the 
very fiber of our race ; makes us ache for tumult and 
change, for strife for its own sake against big odds. 



The Shameless Diary 



The true spirit of the explorer is a primordial rest- 
lessness. It is spurred by instincts of pre-natal be- 
ing and a cloudy hereafter, to search the glamour 
of unknown peaks and seas and forests for assur- 
ance of man's imperfect faith in immortality. It is 
a creative instinct. 

The explorer seldom speaks of it openly; he is 
not unwilling, but he cannot. He is inarticulate, like 
the victim of a passion. Few but he can understand 
his inspiration. The world asks of him purposes 
more obvious. He cites a widespread fervor ; of old, 
perhaps religion ; to-day, he will name science. And 
these are or have been his impulses, in part ; and the 
world can grasp them. Science is the natural heir to 
the cross as the public avatar of exploration. Each 
is sponsor for the Unknowable; one was, one is 
now, the Aladdin lamp of the Improbable. 

But science is a cold ambition, remoter from our 
master motive than the world's old notions of explo- 
ration, vain as they would seem to-day were they 
not dead in us. Maybe no peaks remain, flushed 
with the light that forswears mortality; no unknown 
seas to shatter doubt with wonder. That I do not 
believe. For men still roam over a world too wide 
for any map, and when restlessness and action for 
its own sake inspire us no more, our race will deserve 
to die. 

All reverence to science! Yet I know this: The 



of an Explorer 



elder explorers related what quickened the life and 
visions of their time, and quickens ours, rousing 
men to ever harder ventures. Few who seek the 
iron crown stir us so now. Few men in the street 
see the " use " of exploration, in the North, espe- 
cially. To many, explorers seem vain men seeking 
short cuts to fame, or persons who waste time, 
energy, and wealth, to win the Impossible, to learn 
the Unprofitable. And this cynicism appears to be 
not all the fault of laymen's apathy, or of explorers' 
dumbness. 

If the earth is smaller and tamer than in the old 
days, our sympathies are warmer and the whole 
world's heart is more alert. It craves, above all, 
knowledge of itself, for it is a more complex and 
interesting old world. The life of man as it is, 
naked and unshadowed, brutal maybe, life under 
every stress of fortune — that wins the hungry ear 
and the deeper charity of these present hours. And 
life has thus been searched and exploited almost 
everywhere all lands over, except: Among us who 
seek on enchanted rivers an answer to those under- 
thoughts that make life at once a tragic and an 
ecstatic thing, who dare for nothing but the cause 
of daring, who follow the long trails. 

Men with the masks of civilization torn off, and 
struggling through magic regions ruled over by the 
Spirit of the North or of the South ; human beings 



The Shameless Diary 



tamed by the centuries, then cast out to shift for 
themselves Hke the first victims of existence — they 
must offer the best field of all to help this knowledge 
of ourselves. He knows life best who has seen it 
nakedest, and most exotic. So he that goes plain- 
spoken from the city to the outer waste should be- 
come indeed quite wise. He might tell how the 
weakling's eyes blazed with courage and reproach 
when his leader turned back disheartened, or in 
what words the athlete of the avenue may be the 
first to whimper at starvation; and men would sit 
up and see some of their children in a very, very 
large perspective. And in telling the truth about 
others, a man might reveal it about himself, which 
would be best of all. 

The passions of the long trail bring out the best 
in men and the worst, and all in scarlet ; and while 
the law of compensation, which keeps life livable, 
provides that in the after-memories which form 
existence, only what is pleasant survives, I hold that 
it is unfair to nature and the blessed weaknesses 
which make us human to divert by one hair's breadth 
in any record of the trail from facts as you saw 
them, emotions as you felt them at their time. To 
distort or hide, in deference to any custom, or so- 
called sense of pride or honor, simply is to lie. The 
tragic moments in the heat of the trail's struggle, 
the event as it aifected you as you then were— to 



of an Explorer 



note that with all the passion or heroism, the beastli- 
ness or triumph, of the moment — must not such a 
record in the end turn out all fair? And true as 
can be ? 

Exactly this honesty explorers to-day do not 
attempt. From their stories I get in my mouth a 
horrid taste of varnish. Modestly they derogate 
all heroism or cowardice in the outer places, and 
dryly, oh, how dryly! Whatever may beget that 
big perspective, that in particular is hidden — the 
while from the borders of beyond you hear rumors 
of quarrels on the floe, of heroic forbearance, of 
trivial impatience. But never a living man or human 
act ! And little science, either. A conclusion relates : 
The real results of this expedition will appear dur- 
ing the next ten years, one volume a year, printed 
in Latin by the society that financed us. 

I do not accuse science directly of this conceal- 
ment; only, science is the link between the world 
and the explorer, the key to what he gives it in 
answer to its encouragement and its instinctive 
interest in him. But it surely seems to me that the 
modem explorer deliberately avoids illuminating 
the world in a corner which is very dark, which he 
knows best. Wherein, after and beyond all others, 
he has chance to tell the greatest human truths, 
he has to all intents — deceived. If he is pledged to 
exactitude about his diptera, is he not obliged, in 



The Shameless Diary 



relating human deeds at all, to record as truthfully 
and in full how the outer waste and the ego of each 
companion uplifted or scarred his own? Is not this 
human obligation the greater one, in justice to the 
explorer's self as stirred by his master motive, and 
to the world whose encouragement unwittingly has 
the same source? If such a record be not as direct, 
as full, as frank, as his registry in science, by what 
hypocrisy under the sun has he right to state at all 
the words or acts of any fellow? 

But when I proposed to reveal life as I saw it in 
the back of beyond, in order to realize something 
of that large perspective, I was met with silence, or 
cant. It was against the custom of exploration; 
it would harm the business, destroy order and dis- 
cipline. It wasn't loyal to one's companions in the 
battle of the trail to record words and acts for which 
their saner selves were not responsible ; and besides, 
much happened in the outer places which the world 
had better not know, said some explorers. Every- 
where I encountered the inhuman repression which 
one associates with science; not with that experi- 
mental science of the daring and uplifting imagina- 
tion, but with that jealous sort that disputes and 
differentiates — a justification for deeds of inspira- 
tion, not their honest end. Loyalty to truth was 
gaped at. Apart from malice, such an idea was 
inconceivable to these persons. 



of an Explorer 



Disloyal? To be insincere is disloyalty. Human 
nature in the large is concrete ; men are responsible 
beings, wherever in the world, at whatever task — 
else we have no need of law, and the insane expert 
must rule us. It is insincere to deny a man responsi- 
bility for his acts, dishonorable to pervert by gloss 
or omission the significance of any of his deeds,- 
noble or ignoble. 

Custom and false standards of honor have stulti- 
fied exploration. To-day the world dwells mostly on 
the sensational fact of winning pole or peak, oblivi- 
ous that the long human struggle, inspired by that 
master motive which mitigates endurance and suf- 
fering, are to the explorer his real end, consciously 
or not. Although it needs aid from a liberal world, 
exploration in the true sense never was or can be 
a business; and order and discipline are primarily 
vested in the force of honest and inspired personal- 
ities. Viewed thus, it is hypocrisy to accuse out- 
spokenness with malice. And what, to-day, I ask 
had the world better not know? 

This Diary is an attempt to give, perhaps for the 
first time, a glimpse of that large perspective. Yet 
I went on this expedition through Alaska with no 
such idea in mind. I started and maintained my 
record with the sole idea of stating facts as I saw 
them, emotions as I felt them at their time. Onlv 



8 The Shameless Diary 

after the job was all done did its meaning show 
clear. 

Maybe it has been a shameless task. I know that 
it is without malice. For heaven's sake do not read 
these pages with charity. Its words as they appear 
here were so written at the time that the events and 
feelings which they represent occurred; if not 
always in present order, or exact form of sentence, 
immediately from notes, and on the trail. Only 
clearness demanded the few insertions, public taste 
insignificant omissions. 

I know that the whole truth is always beyond 
reach. Sometimes you think that there cannot be 
such a thing. Utter self-detachment is impossible, 
and the greater the human strain, the more remote. 
The tension of the trail casts a shadow over life, 
could we dispel which we should be gods. To tell 
the truth about other people is hardest of all. But 
if you are honest at it, you may reach at least one 
end: You will have told the truth about yourself. 
It is beyond the power of words or art to make 
any one feel exactly as I have felt a^crossing the 
Alaskan tundra. Afterwards, you seem to have 
written of stage rivers, stage swamps, property 
horses; of unreal acts, and words, and shifts of 
human feature. Under that tension, the human ego, 
with its warring equations, instincts, race traits, 
will seem to have distorted brain and hand; added 



of an Explorer 9 

futility to injustice. In the after-comforts of home, 
you may seem to have Hbeled companions whom in 
the field (under that uncontrollable restraint that 
all men feel beside a fellow with his mask off) you 
felt sure you gave less than their due. But the vision 
of which life, afield or by fireside, is the more 
searching? That in the outer waste, I think. 

The journey was no polar dash, no battle with a 
tropic jungle. It involved no heroic struggle for 
life, though we were always in utter wilderness. 
Yet no explorer, knowing the peculiar scourges of 
summer travel in Alaska, as we had to undertake 
it, would afford to smile at us. Perhaps we were 
ill-equipped, incompetent. We did -the best we could 
with the resources at hand. At any rate, our masks 
of civilization again and again were torn off, and — 
nakedness is nakedness; and — all in all we tried 
our hardest. Therein lies fitness enough for an ink- 
ling of the large perspective. I know that I am an 
explorer only potentially, in spirit. I would not pre- 
sume to try a task harder than this Diary relates. 

We failed. Failure is more than the average lot 
of any venture. It is typical, and through its dark 
glass human nature appears more colorful and more 
complex than in the raw light of achievement. So 
I think that failure, more than less, helps the sig- 
nificance of this record. That our task may since 
have been accomplished bears not at all upon it. The 



10 The Shameless Diary 

fiascos could reveal more of the big perspective than 
the successes of exploration, and give it more honest 
touch and a brighter future vv^ith all men. 

We of this journey had no mutual obligations, 
except those that bind laborers in the same shop. 
I am under no debt of sentiment or gratitude, sub- 
jective or material, to the men of this Diary. How 
to do each day's work with least friction of limb 
and soul — that was our one problem. Restraint was 
imperative overtly on the trail, and there alone 
was exigent for physical reasons. How each of us 
helped or hindered the day's work is all my story. 
We were not friends in any sense admitting senti- 
ment. Yet I believe that I have given, and now 
give, the men with whom I traveled no reason to 
be my enemies. I believe that no motives of any sort 
distort my written record, except the elements of 
my own temperament and heritages. And I hope 
that in reporting any inherent vanity in my fellows, 
I have hit off hardest my own insufferable egotism. 



of an Explorer 11 



CHAPTER II 

GEOGRAPHICAL 

Our aim was to reach the top of Mt. McKinley, 
the highest point of North America, which Hfts 
20,300 feet of ice over the wastes of west Alaska. 
This was really a double task. With the means at 
hand, we knew that to gain the base of the mountain 
might be hardly easier than to climb it. 

A dozen other lands, a dozen other ventures, 
could have served the purport of this Diary as well. 
Mt. McKinley and Alaska, as such, are not vital to 
it. Yet since it does deal with them, their geography 
must be understood. 

Alaska, physically, is more Asiatic than Ameri- 
can. Its three main mountain chains run west and 
east, like all big uplifts in the old world. No 
northwest-southeast, or northeast-southwest ranges 
( Cordilleras), which are typical of the New World, 
go west of Lynn Canal, where the Cascade Moun- 
tains die and end our systems. The Alaskan alpine 
region lies entirely south of the Yukon River 
(which cuts the country in half from east to west), 
north of which the ranges are lower and chaotic. 
Alaska is a thumb of Asia, deceivingly detached 



12 The Shameless Diary 

from it by shallow Behring Sea, which is not a con- 
tinental boundary. Alaska appears to stick out west 
from us, while really it hangs eastward from 
Siberia. 

Think of these three ranges as half circles, and 
you may see alpine Alaska by arranging them thus : 
To the right, east on the map, place the first 
segment, so that it bulges to the north. This is 
the St. Elias-Chugach range, which borders the 
Pacific Ocean for five hundred miles, from Lynn 
Canal to the east shore of Cook Inlet, where it 
ends. To the left, west, place the second, in line 
with the first segment, but bow it south. This is 
the Peninsula-Aleutian range, which starts on the 
west shore of Cook Inlet, and, ridging the Alaskan 
Peninsula as it points southwest, is submerged to 
become the Aleutian Islands, which for six hun- 
dred miles separate Behring Sea from the Pacific, 
and all but touch Siberia, Between them runs an 
arm of the Sea — Cook Inlet — continued north as 
the valley of a river. But the third arc place thus : 
To the right, and parallel to the Chugach range, 
bulging north, but generally two hundred miles in- 
land, and so that it reaches around the sea arm and 
river valley to touch the Peninsula range at its start. 
These are the Alaskan Mountains, the greatest sub- 
arctic chain in the world, and McKinley is its 
apex. The Sushitna River drains the valley north 



of an Explorer 13 

of the Inlet, forming thus the nearest tidewater 
route to the great mountain. 

McKinley lies at the northernmost point of its 
range's arc, a few miles west. Approaching from 
the east, peaks of 10,000 to 12,000 feet touch the 
big southern tributary of the Yukon, the Tanana. 
They reach no further toward the Arctic Circle. 
Here the heights break a little, and Cantwell 
River eats into them, south from the Tanana. On 
its west bank, the peaks tower again, quickly lift- 
ing McKinley from a 12,000 foot ridge. Now they 
bear off southwest, with Mount Hunter, 15,000 
feet; Mount Foraker, 17,100 feet; Mount Russell, 
11,350 feet. And imperceptibly the chain is joined 
to the Peninsula heights, about the head of the 
south fork of Kuskokwim River. 

Thus, more than fancifully, McKinley is the pivot 
of the world. By latitude its topmost high moun- 
tain, McKinley rises at the middle of that bar of 
land, Alaska, connecting the two dry masses that 
form our earth. Southeast it scatters alps toward 
the Wrangel volcano and our dwarfed cordilleras; 
southwest strews volcanoes — Iliamna, Pavloff, the 
new-bom Bogosloff isles — till the smoke of Seguam 
and many another sinks slowly under the sea off 
Kamchatka. 

Cook Inlet is one hundred and fifty miles from 
McKinley, as the raven flies. From the trading 



14 The Shameless Diary 

store at Tyonek, on its west shore, the mountain 
is visible sometimes as a ghostly cap of snow over 
the Sushitna swamps, and on clear days from far 
south at sea, on the hill behind the Russian church 
at Kodiak Island, a tiny golden exhalation. The 
old explorers, Vancouver, Captain Cook, La Pe- 
rouse, saw McKinley six score years ago; so did 
Baron Wrangel, Baranoff, and many a Byzantine 
Archimandrite. Native Aleut and Kenaitze, with 
proper awe, called it *'Bulshaia" (Russian "bulshoi" 
— "great") and adventurers, in the first enchanting 
struggles with gold and death, shrouded it with all 
camp-fire romance. 

Yet none guessed that Bulshaia dwarfed Chim- 
borazo, St. Elias, Orizaba, till Mr. W. A. Dickey, 
common prospector and Princeton graduate, gave 
proofs, renaming it McKinley from the Sushitna 
Valley in 1896. And it was Robert Muldrow 
of the Geological Survey, following Dickey, who 
measured the peak in 1898. Captain Herron, lost 
in the Kuskokwim tundras the next year, ap- 
proached McKinley and Foraker from the west. 
But it remained for Alfred H. Brooks of the Geo- 
logical Survey to reach its base, in 1902. He climbed 
to about 7,000 feet the outlying range, 10,000 feet 
high, which separates it from the Yukon-Kuso- 
kwim watershed. I had seen McKinley twice in 
1900, from the flank of the Wrangel volcano, and 



of an Explorer 15 

from the Ketchumstock Hills on Forty-mile River 
in early winter. 

Where McKinley rises on the outer periphery 
of their arc, the Alaskan Mountains are more than 
forty miles broad, leaping abruptly from the low 
swamps on either side. The range is ramified like 
the outspread arms of an octopus by probably the 
greatest inland glaciers of the world outside the 
Antarctic continent. 

Between actual climbing-base and summit, Mt. 
McKinley has a greater relief than any other of the 
world's mountains. It has also the longest snow 
and ice slope. The real base of McKinley is only 
2,600 feet above the sea; perpetual snow line, to 
which horses can be taken, is at 5,000 feet. Most 
high mountains give you 7,000 feet, at most, of 
snow and ice work; McKinley demands 15,000. 
Excessive glaciation has quickly eroded the uplift 
into steep amphitheaters with sheer ridges. All gla- 
ciers are "hanging" in their upper parts, leaving 
nowhere a cliff unclothed. Snow slides, snow and 
rain, are almost incessant. In Alaska, weather con- 
ditions are sub-artic. Excepting Mt. St. Elias, all 
big ascents heretofore have been made in temperate, 
or warmer, regions, from high base camps, reached 
by pack beasts over solid trails. (Mt. Ruwenzori, 
too, may be an exception.) Aconcagua, 223,080 
feet, was climbed without a foot being placed in 



16 The Shameless Diary 

snow, from a 14,000- foot base, to which mules were 
taken. Mustaghata, 25,600 feet, was ascended to 
20,600 feet with yaks. Effective height in the Hima- 
layas is even less. 

And almost as baffling was the route which we 
had to take to the base of McKinley. We planned 
to travel by pack-train from Tyonek, on Cook Inlet, 
up the western tributaries of the Sushitna, across 
the Alaskan range to the head of the south fork 
of the Kuskokwim, and follow along its face north- 
east to the mountain foot ; i. e., to follow the sides of 
a right angle pointed west, in order to reach a point 
almost due north of Cook Inlet. This was, in the 
main. Brook's route, and Herron had followed it in 
part, although we knew that most traces of their 
trails would be obliterated. The distance was about 
450 miles, and Brooks had covered it with horses 
in seven weeks from Tyonek. The first half was 
to be over the tundras of the Sushitna Valley, the 
remainder across higher ground on the west side of 
the Alaskan range. 

We were forced to travel thus in order to reach 
the northwest face of the mountain. Brooks had 
proved it accessible, and It was the side least sur- 
rounded by peaks and glaciers. It seemed from 
every point of view the best from which to ascend. 
Following up tributaries of the Kuskokwim and 
Yukon (Tanana) Rivers would have landed us 



of a7i Explorer 17 

within a hundred miles of this northwest face; but 
we had neither time nor money to take a pack- 
train, which was necessary anyhow, to their heads 
of navigation. By ascending the Sushitna River, 
we could have reached the southeast side of Mc- 
Kinley, that most thickly insulated by ice and moun- 
tains, and worst in climate. Over Brooks' route we 
might gain the foot of McKinley in the single sum- 
mer at hand, with a month for reconnoitering and 
ascents. 

I dreaded that first half, the Sushitna tundra. 
Tundra, strictly speaking, is the coastal marshland 
of Siberia, yet any vast, low, and ill-drained country 
in the North, forested or no, is called tundra. It 
was considered almost madness to venture into the 
interior overland from Tyonek. Stories were told 
of men who had set out from there to be driven back 
crazed by mosquitoes. I had traveled over tundra 
in Alaska, and knew its hateful yellow moss bor- 
dered by white skeleton spruces, its treacherous 
ponds sprinkled with white flowers, its willow thick- 
ets concealing abysses of red muck. The buzz of 
bull-dog flies, the hot anger and desperation of 
burdened cayuses kicking helplessly in a mire, were 
familiar enough. But I believed that to reach our 
mountain was just the old, old act of hitting the 
trail, hitting very, very hard, and staying with it. 

The ascent seemed to be more doubtful. Ours 



18 The Shameless Diary 

must be a dash to the top, taking long chances, I 
thought, on success. Our time for reconnoitering 
in uncertain weather was too short. McKinley was 
a very large mountain, quite unexplored, deeply 
bedded in a great range. St. Elias was not conquered 
until the fifth try, and then by trained alpine men, 
at a cost of $50,000. Ours was to be a first attempt, 
by men of no alpine experience, who had hardly 
$5,000. But the men who had failed on St. Elias 
declared that alpinists would have succeeded there 
no better; and I believe that Prof. Russell would 
have climbed St. Elias if he had had the exception- 
ally fine weather which brought the Italian Duke 
of the Abruzzi success there. 

But our limitations made me no less eager for the 
adventure. I longed, at any cost, to return to Alaska, 
whose hard freedom I have always loved better than 
anything else on earth. 



of an Explorer 19 

CHAPTER III 

THE OUTFIT, HUMAN AND MATERIAL 

Who we of this expedition were, our measure of 
fitness for this job — that the Diary should tell. 
Here is no place to be personal, except on the sur- 
face, which is necessary. 

The Professor, our leader, was a man of polar 
experience, hardly versed in the craft of trail or 
woods, or packing horses. He was our topographer 
and meteorologist; but the top of McKinley, not 
science, was our prime object, he told me; and that 
once we were at the foot, he was certain that the 
summit would be ours, at the rate of 5,000 feet a 
day. I believe in looking hardest at the uncertainties 
of a struggle, not letting the glamour of its sure vic- 
tories dazzle you. The Professor was more than 
forty years old ; married ; of German descent ; fair- 
haired, large- featured. 

He chose me as geologist, and to be second in 
command. I have that fervor for geology, backed 
by small book knowledge, which blesses all habitual 
wanderers in the chaotic North. I had been an ad- 
venturer on the Edmonton trail to the Klondike in 
1898, where a fifth of us died, and two years later 



20 The Shameless Diary 

had explored the Wrangel volcano, two hundred 
miles east of McKinley. I was unmarried, twenty- 
six, Yankee. 

Of the four other members of our party, the Pro- 
fessor picked two, and two were casually included 
on the way to Cook Inlet. 

^^..wr^^H The first I call Simon. He was a Jew. The Pro- 
fessor asked me if I objected on that score to his 
joining us. I said that I did not. I have the racial, 
not the religious, repugnance to Jews. I had never 
relished their race-selfishness, and scouted their 
tenacity under physical and mental stress. The 
Diary shows how wrong I was here in one regard, 
at least. But in my ardor to get North, I persuaded 
myself that such natural instincts were prejudices, 
and unworthy. Simon's only adventuring had been 
with the summer session of a North Polar fiasco, 
on which he made a collection of flowers. So he was 
to be our botanist. He was small, dark, rotund, and 
twenty-one. 

c^t. Next, was Fred King, of Montana. He had 
packed the Government horses on Brooks' Geologi- 
cal Survey trip to McKinley. He joined the Pro- 
fessor in eastern Washington, where our leader 
had picked and bought from Indians fifteen pack- 
horses, some broken, some unbroken. I first saw 
him in Seattle. He was a small man, with a fragile 
forehead and clear eyes; unmarried; in the mid- 



of an Explorer 21 

thirties. He had spent his Hfe packing and trap- 
ping in the Bitter Root Mountains. "Would you 
know about horses?" he asked me when we met. I 
asked his opinion of our beasts. ''Does the Pro- 
fessor know a lot about horses?" he asked again. 
I said that I did not know. He went on: ''I think 
they'll make the trip, but they're not just the animals 
I'd have picked." 

Though discredited for Alaska, I thought it best 
to take an alpine guide. We had neither time nor 
money to send to Europe for one, but we knew that 
Swiss guides, although with second-class certificates, 
had been imported into Canada by a railroad. I 
went to Banff and found that they were not for 
rent ; failed to get one. And the horse-rustlers there 
said: ''You don't want no Swiss guides. They're 
handy high up on rocks and ice, but lose themselves 
in the woods. Six weeks across Alasky swamps? 
They'd die or quit you the first day." 

In Seattle we outfitted. I hate it — lists of grub, 
clothing, saddlery, pots ; musing on how neatly this 
new poncho buckle will free your arm, that cheese- 
cloth lining make your tent mosquito-proof. We 
clicked and condemned each neat, new, folding 
device that will not last a minute on the tundra. 
We bought, briefly, for grub: Eighty-six pounds 
per month per man, the government Alaskan ra- 
tion; mos.ly flour, beans, bacon, and sugar, with 



22 The Shameless Diary 

tea, which the dimate makes you crave, and little 
coffee — food least in bulk, greatest in nourishment; 
sixteen hundred pounds in all, for six men for three 
months, the least time that we could be on the trail. 
This is the pioneer-prospectors' fare, taught by ex- 
perience. We let alone all tinned food, except to 
pamper ourselves with a few cans of milk and 
butter; tins give least sustenance in proportion to 
weight and bulk, pack abominably through soft 
ground and rough, and we had to travel fast and 
light. We had no use for patent or condensed grub, 
except some erbswurst pea-soup — an experiment, 
though it is German army emergency ration. We 
counted on killing sheep, moose, and caribou on 
the north side of the Alaskan range, where King 
said that they were thick. We took arctic pemmi- 
can, two cheeses, and a box of biscuits to eat on the 
mountain; primus stove, two spirit lamps, wood 
alcohol and kerosene to cook with above snow line ; 
no stimulant at all — I have never seen and cannot 
imagine a case in the North where it would be of 
use — some drugs, I forget which, as we never used 
them. 

Clothing: Boot-rubbers and heavy asbestos- 
tanned boots for the trail, light boots for the moun- 
tain; wool underwear, overalls, jumpers, German 
socks, rubber sheeting. For the mountain: Four 
real eiderdown bag-quilts, and much st re-enough 



of an Explorer 23 

arctic dress, hair ropes, ice-axes. For horses : 
twelve saw-buck saddles, three Abercrombies, hob- 
bles, cinch-rope, sling rope, oiled pack-covers, a 
cowbell, and a double blanket and a half for each 
brute — we slept in these on the trail, taking but 
one real sleeping-bag. A canvas tent for four; for 
the mountain, a conical Shantung silk thing, de- 
signed by the Professor. Guns : A Savage .3033, 
the Professor's Greenland .44 Winchester relic, 
and Simon's arsenal — a Winchester .22 and Colt 
automatic .38. Instruments: Aneroids, thermom- 
eters, Abeny level, but, I think, no sextant or arti- 
ficial horizon; no mercurial barometer, anyhow, 
though the Professor filled two huge boxes to tor- 
ture their pack beast in the name of science. 

My scientific outfit went no further than a geo- 
logical hammer. Other hardware: Heavy steel and 
granite cook pots, no aluminum — which burns like 
tallow when grease-soaked; nails, wire, and two 
axes; my Weno Hawkeye with Goerz double ana- 
stigmatic lens, the Professor's reflex camera, a 
No. 3 Kodak, films in tin cases bound with electric 
tape, Zeiss field glasses. No chairs or tables; no 
luxuries at all, not because we posed at roughing 
it, but because fifteen horses in a new, soft country 
is quite too big a pack train, anyhow. We bought 
with an eye to fast, hard, light travel, and that 
alone. Nothing "patent," nothing "folding," noth- 



24 The Shameless Diary 

ing "automatic" but the Colt — and a kind of fire- 
grid, with legs, to cook over, the Professor's ob- 
session. Something over a ton in all; that seems 
enough to remember. 

Seattle furnished our fifth man, Miller. An utter 
stranger, he had sought us out and asked us to take 
him. The Professor twice refused, not admiring 
his physique; but the night our horses and outfit 
were loaded on the 6'. S. Santa Ana, for Cook Inlet 
(June lo, 1903), we still had not enough men. 
Miller appeared on the dock to see us off — and 
came with us. He was tall and slim and quiet; a 
low-voiced youth of twenty-four, who did office 
work in the Seattle city hall, and was clever with 
cameras. He was our photographer. 

We still needed another man. But at Juneau, 
Sitka, Yakutat, where we touched, following up 
the coast, all fit men were either hot on the trail 
of certain riches, or their dreams of gold had turned 
to ashes in the mouth, and they were bound home. 
Glaciers shot bristling into the sea, like rays from 
cold suns; icebergs rotted delicately in the spectra 
of midnight. Seaward over the archipelagoes 
moved never boat, never man, never shadow — only 
sometimes an eagle with whitened head and tail 
specking the late-lying snowfield upon one of ten 
thousand alps. 

The eighth day out we anchored off Kayak Island 



of an Explorer 25 

to land and ship passengers. A black-haired, square- 
featured Apollo came aboard. He knew me. We 
had camped together a single night three years 
before on Copper River. I did not remember. Soon 
King told him how on a certain creek which the 
Government party had crossed a week out from 
Tyonek, Brooks had prospected 12^ cents to the 
pan, which meant wealth illimitable, if true. When 
we asked him to come with us, he said, "I'll make 
the trip with you to shake a pan in that crick — and 
to go with you." And the next morning, after we 
had left the town of Valdez in its ice-hung fjord, he 
looked at me and said, "Shanghaied!" 

This was Jack, Scotch-Irish, and twenty-five. He 
had begun life as a breaker-boy in Pennsylvania 
collieries. His partner had died in his arms in the 
terrible winter of '98, starving and lost on Copper 
River. Jack was that immutable being, a prospector. 

In two days we had entered Cook Inlet. Still we 
siphoned water for the thirsty horses, balancing 
buckets down ladders, as the mare we had named 
Bosco kicked herself crazy when you went near. 
At last we sighted the steam of the Redoubt volcano 
pouring over the snowy Chigmit range, and hove to 
one midnight, swinging the lead off Tyonek, on 
the west shore of the inlet, near its head. 



26 The Shameless Diary 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CAYUSE GAME 

June 2^. — At three this morning we anchored 
a quarter mile off Tyonek, as the Swede sailors 
growled over the rail that the muddy tide was run- 
ning eight miles an hour, though I rated it at four. 
Every one was sullen. Ashore, the low gables of 
the log store, weathered a pasty white, edged the 
beach; wolf-dogs whined beyond, crooked ridge- 
poles and ragged eaves hid Siwashes, and a ter- 
race quilted with green gardens shot upward to 
the waste. 

King showed up on deck, glum; then the Pro- 
fessor, who yawned : "Dunn, I think I shall disem- 
bark you first, to procure us a boat and a cabin.*' 
You see, we may send part of the outfit up Su- 
shitna River in a boat, which the pack train can 
meet at the head of navigation, having traveled 
light over the first hundred miles of swamp. So 
the skipper rowed me ashore, and I woke Holt, 
the trader, a gaunt, Yankee-like man, who has boats 
galore. 

The winch out on board began to squeak, lift- 



of an Explorer 27 

ing our horses from the hold — a band around their 
bellies, their legs pointed in, as you handle kittens 
— and dropped them one by one into the tide. The 
mate wouldn't bring his ship nearer shore, fear- 
ing to strand. The Light Gray struck out into the 
Inlet, and was washed to the beach half a mile 
below town, squirting water from her nose. Then 
a boat-crew, holding each horse's tie-rope, caught 
them as they dived, led them in bucking the tide. 
It makes your heart jump, for not a beast seems 
to have a fighting chance, champing upright against 
the rip, grunting in terror till he reels from the icy 
water, forlorn and draggled. You can't help, for 
though it couldn't replace a horse, the steamer com- 
pany is pledged to land all safely. I piloted about 
a Siwash boy tied to the Big Gray, as a mark for 
the swimmers, and between bites of Holt's fried 
mush and salmon, cursed the sailors for quitting 
a few beasts before they felt bottom. Sometimes 
one towed away a boat, or a tie-rope was dropped 
as we yelled ; but all reached land, and I was sore 
that this swimming game turned out easier than 
we'd feared. Only the Light Gray was in bad shape. 
I rubbed her down with hay, and covered her with 
a blanket from a Swede fisherman's bunk in the 
deserted cabin we all share. 

Then I was off to a native village five miles down 
the Inlet, where the crazy mare Bosco had led 



28 The Shameless Diary 

four of the bunch. A lonely, hot walk; but return- 
ing, I took along two Siwash kids to bully into 
herding the horses. And granite bowlders from the 
glacier that once filled the Inlet lay stranded like 
Titanic goose-eggs on glistening beds of rubbery 
wood-coal — and the Future, too, bewildered me. 
Back at Holt's, no one had landed. I sat on the 
board walk before the cabins till it was wet by 
the thirty-foot tide. Rank weeds squeezed through 
the planks; the terrace behind was purple with 
lupine, and tender birch leaves frittered in the 
wind. Along the squdgy tidal creek, gutted red 
salmon hung from cross-poles by Siwash huts in 
the long salt grass. Starved dogs, half-naked chil- 
dren, shawled klootches, bucks in prospectors' old 
clothes, all gathered, stared, shook hands, clucked 
questions. Home at last, in Alaska! 

The rest of us landed, and broncho-busting began 
after a salmon dinner, cooked on the beach with 
lignite over the Professor's iron grid, which weighs 
a ton. First, we played Daniels, the den of horses 
being the log corral built long ago by the Gov- 
ernment. We dodged heels and fangs, till we 
caught all the beasts. Through chinks in the logs 
we let out their neck-ropes, time and again to be 
kicked into snarls. When at last we had each horse 
tied separately outside, King applied nooses to 
their jaws, while we formed guys to the three 



of an Explorer 29 

cables on every broncho; tumbled and sprawled as 
they fought, till the hemp drew blood from their 
tongues, and, weary of bucking, they fell over 
backwards. Finally, each kneeled down as if to pray, 
which is the sign of surrender, and gingerly we 
clapped on hobbles, laughing as they took their 
first kangaroo steps. 

Next — Bosco again. She had jumped the corral, 
and scooted to the wooded draws and benches of 
the terrace. For three hours, and as many miles 
south, west, and north, we scoured the devil's club 
for her, mosquito clouds a-roaring about our green 
head nets. And in vain. ... 

It is ten o'clock at night. Jack and I have built 
a smudge on the beach. We sit watching the low 
East Foreland on the far shore of the Inlet, lying 
like a finger on the swirling water, which mirage 
dissolves and twists into watery dots and lines; 
now a dome, now a helmet, now a gourd. In the 
south glitters an endless, ghostly panorama of ice. 
At its heart, the broken cone of the Redoubt vol- 
cano (12,000 feet) trails dusky vapors from a col- 
umn of pale steam, against a sky too pure for 
Heaven. And it seems the sun will never touch 
the horizon, and the heat of Sahara must beat for- 
ever on this land of snow and sunshine. 

Jack says that the Swede fishermen nearly shot 
me for swiping that blanket. 



30 The Shameless Diary 

June 24. — Bronchos have tough gums and short 
memories. Life has become dodging horse heels, 
then hunting them. 

To-day we played Daniels all over again. Still 
we noosed teeth. Still anchored to tie-ropes, each 
buck tumbled or lifted us in air, till a pack-saddle 
or two could slyly be slid over the gentler haunches. 
Early in the game, Simon slunk away to pack His 
duffle ; next, the Professor welched to fuss with his 
instruments. King and Jack didn't like that. They 
dropped remarks about people being "no good,'* 
and "afraid of work." 

I knotted all the cinches, and rigged the saddle 
sling-ropes. We sacked the grub in fifty-pound 
canvas bags, and after hours of throwing diamond 
hitches, often a dozen times on the same beast, took 
a volcanic trial run up the beach; gathered in the 
scattered sacks ; re-started the circus. 

Then off to the outlaw Bosco, the only beast 
that has specified itself in our kicking nimbus of 
cayuse. I saw her through my cloud of pests on a 
windy angle of the terrace. Up went her tail like 
an inky fountain, and she snorted from half a mile 
off. On we struggled among the lakes, ridges, 
muskegs of the devil's club jungle. Even the Pro- 
fessor hunted. By afternoon we found the mashed 
grass where she slept last night and rolled off the 
flies. Just so did we yesterday; just so shall we 



of an Explorer 31 

to-morrow, in this country where they told us at 
Seldovia no white men will go in summer, fear- 
ing to be killed by the 'skeets. 

Once, across a lake, a snow mountain rose over 
that maddening forest, a capless dome between 
smooth, wide shoulders — McKinley, by the gods! 
though two hundred miles away. Thus I got bear- 
ings and hit out for salt water, and in an hour 
slid down to high tide. Lucky, since I'd been lost 
a long time, with all Alaska to wander in. That's 
horse-hunting, in flat country, without a compass, 
and the sun circling drunkenly through the sky. 

Jack has been talking with me, and not pleas- 
antly. I don't want to write all he says — yet. He 
is dissatisfied, and offered to quit us. He doesn't 
like Simon or the Professor, because he doesn't 
understand tenderfeet. He has lived too long in 
Alaska. A man must go back to the States at least 
once in five years to keep sane. But this doesn't 
worry me, though Jack incites King to growl. 
They have become very intimate, sleep together, 
and are whispering there by the smudge as I write. 
Somehow I like Jack. I can't help it. 

Four ruminative old trappers camped in a tent 
have been catching trout in the creek. They say 
that we can't pull out till to-morrow afternoon, 
when the tide is low, as the flood covers the beach 
up which we shall start to the head of the Inlet. 



32 The Shameless Diary 

The Professor suggests giving up Bosco, and King 
says it will take days, anyhow, to break her; yet I 
hate to have her best us. 

Mount Iliamna and the snowy Chigmits over the 
West Foreland glow like molten copper. I am pick- 
ing devil's club prickers out of my fingers before 
the poison suppurates. My enemies, the Swedes, 
who fish for the Kussiloff cannery down the Inlet, 
are carrying nets into their boats and soon will drift 
up-shore with the night tide. Neither clocks nor the 
sun rule life here; only the tide, the tide, filling, 
emptying this trough in the magic wilderness. 

Jack says, "Note the mosquitoes have got their in- 
troduction, all right." Yes, they're biting like . 

June 25. — Here we're camped under the sea- 
terrace, in long sand grass, vetches, and drift- 
wood, eight miles above Tyonek. Only the fat 
State o' Maine squawman saw us pull out toward 
afternoon; it seemed not to interest Holt or the 
trappers at all. We threw away the grid, and gave 
up Bosco to be bitten to death, for revenge. Pack- 
ing took only four hours and we had no circus at 
the get-a-way. Not a beast bucked; the train only 
broke through a log-pile; the Professor, who led 
with the Big Bay on a long rope, was stood on his 
head, and Jack was tumbled for a foot-long hole 
in his overalls. We straggled north up the beach, 



of an Explorer 33 

Jack and I falling behind to smell for oil seepage 
in the sandy cliffs. At a ruined cannery the horses 
waded to their packs, and staggered out through 
quicksands. 

Sure it's the first night on the long trail ! I hear 
the first pot of Bayo beans a-bubbling, and the 
first dose of dried peaches is cold and porridgy 
by the lignite fire. Jack has burnt the beans, for 
such coal fire is hotter than you think. The Pro- 
fessor is taking a bath. Simon is mussing around, 
doing amusing, superfluous things with smudge fires, 
a whetstone and a brand-new knife, asking geo- 
metrical conundrums, and whittling a puzzle. Jack, 
stretched flat on his stomach, a red handkerchief 
over his head, is deep in my geology book. King 
is biting off chewing plug — in quarts. The fourteen 
horses are slowly back-trailing down the beach^ 
stretching their necks for bunch-grass on the 
terrace. 

Miller left Tyonek to-night on the rising tide 
with a third of the outfit in Holt's long, dory-like 
river boat. He is to follow up the shore and meet 
us to-morrow at the mouth of Beluga River ; thence 
with Simon or the Professor to pole and cordel 
up Sushitna River, its west fork, the Skwentna, 
and that river's tributary, the Yentna. Roughly, the 
boat is to travel two sides of a right triangle, while 
we, hitting inland northwest, follow its hundred- 



34 The Shameless Diary 

mile hypotenuse, for the first fifty miles by a half- 
efifaced winter trail. The land stretch, according to 
King, is too soft for horses packed with more than 
a hundred pounds each, and we must have a boat 
to ferry the grub at the Yentna and Skwentna 
fords. 

Far across the Inlet, the snow-blue mountains, 
where Knick Arm breaks the range, open like 
mighty jaws. South rages the muddy tide out of 
the Inlet, bearing derelict cottonwoods on its 
bosom, which now and then we start up to gaze 
at, for their black roots seem to be swimming 
moose or bear. 

Jack and I have lost our pipes. Wonderful, isn't 
it ? — the aesthetic new oaths this country can inspire. 

June 26. — An hour to herd the horses over 
beach and terrace ; another to make corrals with 
cinch ropes, noose their necks, tie each to a willow 
bush, unsnarl ropes and twigs, coax them one by 
one to the saddle and grub pile; more hours to 
blanket, saddle, sling packs and cinch. I'm up first 
about five, cooking. Jack and King hunt the beasts 
while I wash dishes and pack the white grub horse 
with the two panniers — 'alforguses,' King calls 
them, which is Montanese for 'alforhaja' — that hold 
the pots and food we're using. Jack and I saddle 
and cinch seven horses; King and Simon seven. 



of a?i Explorer 35 

The Professor fusses about. He's very funny and 
energetic trying to catch the beasts. 

Miller arrived unexpectedly on the tide at dawn 
and took Simon into the boat for the mouth of 
Beluga River, which we hit for overland, trailing 
inland from the beach. 

Right by camp, the wild Dark Buckskin rolled 
down the bench, and chawed blood from my fin- 
gers when I dragged him up. Twice he fell into 
a crick, wedged on his back between logs, waving 
his legs, so we had to cut the tie-rope. The Pro- 
fessor looked on with a queer, quiet look. This is 
his first dose of cayusing in the North. Fred led the 
train with the Big Bay, we driving all in line, each 
behind his own four or five beasts. Even had we 
enough horses, it would be impossible for any one 
to ride. Too much doing. 

We cursed and stumbled through snags and 
muck; staggered across open tundra; hacked the 
dense alders of treacherous cricks ; halted to re- 
cinch one horse, while thirteen stampeded, wedg- 
ing packs between the spruces. It was the familiar 
old game. Off bucks the Light Buckskin, his fifty- 
pound flour sacks spraying half an acre. Chase 
him, catch him, hunt the sacks, lug them up, re- 
saddle, re-cinch — while again the train wanders 
away, scraping off its load. Good Gawd ! Then you 
must think of other lands and other sufferings. 



36 The Shameless Diary 

Hold your tongue, and see only the bursting rose- 
buds, the golden arnica, smell the sweet Labrador 
tea mashed by the floundering horses, behold the 
smooth benches of black loam and long red-top 
grass, and wonder why long ago Alaska was not 
settled, civilized, and spoiled. Why, to-day I saw 
lots of old stumps starry-white with bunch-berry 
flowers, as if cultivated there ! 

The Professor took things stolidly. I think he 
would face death and disaster without a word, but 
through the insensitiveness of age and too much 
experience, rather than by true courage. I cannot 
believe he has imagination; of a leader's qualities 
he has shown not one. He seems our sympathetic 
servant. I suspect no iron hand behind his inno- 
cence. He doesn't smoke, and that makes me un- 
comfortable 

At two o'clock we reached this grassy alder 
swamp, each in his 'skeet cloud-of-witnesses, where 
the terrace dips down to the melancholy tide-flats 
of the Beluga, strewn with wrecked spruces. Be- 
lugas, which are white whales, were plunging 
shoulders in the river, as should be. A white fan 
emerges from water the color of cafe au lait, 
with a "tsschussk," as if it belched steam. And an 
old brown bear, pawing for candle-fish, looked at us 
in a lazy, human way, and galumphed off slowly 
into the cottonwoods across the sticky silt. 



of an Explorer 37 

Simon and Miller came in with the boat at 
eight o'clock. I doubted if they'd make it. If they 
hadn't, they couldn't take the boat to the Skwentna 
ford, and have no business on this trip. That's all. 

Jack and I have unloaded the boat, and ferried 
everything that the pack train is to carry to the 
north side of the river. Again and again we crossed 
the brown swirl, till even when we looked at them 
from shore the very woods still swam inland. We 
pulled off our arms bucking the current straight, 
hitting land half a mile below our aim and cor- 
deling up. The thirty-foot tide was rising, but 
under the current, which it simply lifts without 
slacking. Then, like nigger coal-heavers in the 
tropics, we hustled the sacks on our backs from 
shore into the bear's cottonwoods, wallowing ankle- 
deep in the glacial muck. The 'skeets, as always 
in such desperate work, enraged us. 

Jack and I are alone on the far side of the river. 
It is raining; we have no tent, and I am trying to 
make the small sleeping-bag water-proof and 
mosquito-proof with a poncho and a head-net. It*s 
no use. We'll fight them awake and sopping to- 
night. 

I wonder what's going to happen to us these 
next three months. Everything's easy so far. . . . 

We're over here, you see, to shoo Mr. Bear from 
the bacon. 



38 The Shameless Diary 



CHAPTER V 

THE FORBIDDEN TUNDRA 

June 27. — First, we swam the horses across the 
Beluga. It's no worse than landing them from a 
ship, except as risking a basket of eggs is worse 
than risking eggs singly. We hand-corraled them 
with cinches on shore at low tide, when we thought 
they couldn't jump back up the bank, not because 
the current lessens — it never does. But up the bank 
they dashed through the ropes, and a dozen times 
we fought them back through the alders. With all 
inside the rope at last. King and I swept them into 
the river with it, like minnows in a net, the others 
shouting and stoning. They hesitate. Plunge. The 
current wiggles them as they stand upright at first, 
churning the water with their fore hoofs; strews 
them out in irregular parabolas toward the far 
shore, some swimming madly, and as they weaken, 
drifting down; others calmly, at last reaching up- 
stream or colliding with the weaker ones. Then the 
tightness in your heart relaxes, for they all snort 
in chorus, and it bewilders you to see them struggle 
up the slimy bank, one by one, scattered out for 
half a mile. 



of an Explorer 39 

Till noon we were packing them with the solid 
fifty-pound sacks — flour, bacon, beans, two bags 
to each horse — and loading the boat with the 
mountain-climbing outfit, instrument boxes and all 
unwieldy stuff. The Professor suddenly decided off- 
hand, consulting no one, to take the river trip with 
Miller alone. So Simon is with us. We didn't want 
him, and King tried to make me hint a protest to 
the Professor, but I wouldn't. So I'm in charge 
of the main outfit, for ten days at least, through 
what's said to be the wettest, most desperate mush- 
ing in Alaska; responsible for three men I never 
knew a month ago: a little New York Jew, a 
young sour-dough, and a Montana packer who was 
with Brooks of the Geological Survey when he 
crossed this stretch. He (King) says that the In- 
dian trail we follow runs about west into the foot- 
hills of the Tordrillo Mountains; then is lost, and 
we must hit due north to Skwentna River. 

"Dunn," said the Professor, as we parted, "under 
average conditions it is to be expected that we 
shall meet at the Skwentna ford in rather more than 
eight days." I hope so. Anyhow, new trails open 
in the old wilderness of life. . . . 

Later, and God knows where. The real thing 
just hit us. This winter trail we follow led from 
the birchy Beluga straight out into tundra, through 
line after line of ratty spruces, where you sink 



40 The Shameless Diary 

ankle-deep into sick, yellow moss, and wobbly little 
ridges separate small ponds. Suddenly every horse 
was down, kicking and grunting helplessly in the 
mud. They lost their heads. They seemed to like 
to jump off into the ponds. We tugged, hauled, 
kicked at the brutes; unpacked the sacks, lugged 
them to shore, pulled on tie-ropes, tails; batted 
heads, poured water down nostrils till they hissed 
like serpents. One was out, another was down. Oh, 
our beautiful oaths! Hot, hungry, dizzy, insane 
with mosquitoes, we struggled waist-deep in yel- 
low muck, unsnarling slimy cinches, packing, re- 
packing the shivering, exhausted beasts. It was 
endless. Torture. 

We kept to dry gullies toward the river-bed, we 
kept to tundra; but always the train tore through 
the iron-fingered scrub spruce, ripping packs, snag- 
ging hoofs, tumbling us at the end of lead lines. 
Mount Sushitna tormented us, floating, patched with 
snow over the sickish forest ; and the long, low hill 
we're aimin' for, laid out in green squares of tropic 
grass and alders, seemed forever to recede. I call 
it Alice's Hill, after "Through the Looking Glass." 
Remember her perverse garden. 

Jack went oflF at half-cock. "Just the sort of 

a trail a old woman like that 

Brooks would follow," he yelled ; and when I said 
this was a pretty hard deal, the first crack out of 



of an Explorer 41 

the box, he shouted : "What yer blamin' King for ? 
It ain't his fault." 

All had been down for the tenth time, and a 
horse can't stand much more. Some one said 
"Camp." We'd gone only four miles; it was six 
o'clock. Fred looked at me. "It's up to you, you're 
the Professor," he drawled. Responsibility bit. 

So we've camped. No grass for the horses ; mud 
water, and yet Fred, who moves so calmly and 
surely when all seems down and lost, who isn't 
supposed to touch a frypan, has volunteered to 
bake the bread. Wonderful man — or is it he thinks 
I can't? 

I've put a cheese-cloth door in the tent, — oh, 
just to whet the 'skeet appetites. Jack is snoring, 
exhausted. The horse blankets we try to sleep in 
— we've nothing else, the Professor swiped the 
sleeping-bags — are soaked. Good-night. 

June 28. — Two days' travel, and we've gone 
eight miles! At this rate we won't see McKinley 
till winter. 

Calvin, when he manufactured his own hand- 
made hell, must have been to Alaska. Oh, yes. 
King says that last year the ground had not 
thawed out here as much as this. But, by Heaven, 
we'll make it! 

Yesterday was only a hint ; watering the brutes' 



42 The Shameless Diary 



nostrils was child's play to how we kicked their 
necks and eyes to-day ; being dragged and snagged 
through the scrub was fun to how we've been hunt- 
ing Alaska over just now for shipped packs, to how 
we'd meet a pond after a mile-long detour, and 
have to track back again with the same antics. 

The old White, Big Buckskin, who is much 
too aged and heavy for this game, the Bay Mare 
carrying our dunnage, would all jflounder together 
into each pond. Still Alice's Hill, and Mount Su- 
shitna, north at the head of the Inlet, mocked us. 
Still the sickish, tufted spruces dwarfed one an- 
other in plague-stricken procession down into the 
stinking yellow sphagnum of these hot ponds. 
We fished the soaked food sacks out from the little 
white flowers floating on top. Sank to our knees 
at every step, seeming to lift a ton on each boot. 

Hot, hungry, dizzy, we fell into camp by this 
grassy stream. I kept on alone over the mile-long 
tundra beyond it, to see the worst ahead for to- 
morrow. Responsibility was not wearing me. If 
we don't get through, it will be no fault of ours. 
Glossy snows cloaked Mount Spurr (ii,ooo feet) 
in the southwest. I floundered across a backbone 
of red moss, climbed its lower slopes twice, to more 
tundra and fearful mud holes. This damned winter 
trail ! You can't write the thoughts you have alone 
on the tundra, dragging onward three men by a 



of an Explorer 43 

trail leading from nowhere to nowhere, where we 
shall never pass a soul nor see sign of man for 
months. Sand-hill cranes with scarlet wings and 
red heads floated away, with squawks like wood- 
wedged axes. Twice I sank to rest in the moss, and 
found I was crawling on. I tried to smoke, but it 
only sickened me. . . . 

But now I have eaten — eaten — six enormous 
bannocks, six plates of Bayo beans, four cups of 
tea like lye, and I feel better than I have ever felt, 
in any state of intoxication, by anything. Alaska 
proves the law of compensation. I have just shaved, 
with the tin reflector which bakes the bread for a 
mirror. King is spreading Simon's mosquito goo 
on his face, just to prove it's no good. Simon, who 
has catarrh, is snufling things up his nose from a 
crooked glass tube. Jack is telling how once he 
cleaned up a temperance hotel. . . . 

June 29. — Over Alice's Hill! 

I started out dead tired. I'd never suffered from 
real exhaustion before. You can't write much these 
days. 

Let any one make any comment on the trail, 
and Jack turns it into a personal insult. He's just 
hurled away the axe, while chopping fire wood, 
as if it had bitten or spoken to him. 

When the Dark Buckskin, the meanest horse in 



44 The Shameless Diary 

the bunch, jumped into a pond for the third time 
to-day, and I after, to haul him out, I splashed 
Jack, and he cursed me for five minutes. He's Irish, 
so it doesn't mean much. Later I apologized. He 
gaped. I saw it "took." To manage him you njust 
be polite, oh, so very polite, and do little favors 
for him v^hen he doesn't expect them ; for he does 
work like fury, and thinks no one else can. Simon 
said on the trail to-day that Jack wouldn't stick 
with us, "because he's Irish." "Think so?" said I, 
nastily, remembering what Simon is. After all, with 
us four, the leadership is coming down to a tussle 
between Jack and me. He has more power, but 
I hope I have intelligence and — forbearance. When 
he attacks me, I can only say, "I can't argue the 
matter." 

The hill made only a short break in the floun- 
dering ponds and steely scrub. Tundra still suc- 
ceeded tundra. You think you're at the end of 
all, pass through a slim line of spruces, a birch or 
two, a yard of dry ground — out again upon an- 
other tundra. It makes you dizzy. 

Simon is absolutely dazed; has real old Alaska 
numbness; can't move, or think, or hear. He 
doesn't even know how to cook, nor seem to want 
to learn. He has absolutely no initiative, which I 
suppose is racial. But I pity him. Nine men out 
of ten fresh from the city wouldn't do half as well 



of an Explorer 45 

— couldn't stand this. Yet once to-day I heard him 
singing his college song; and Jack, after cursing 
the Professor, Simon, King, and every one, bursts 
into a magnificent whistle of "The Wearing of the 
Green," looks at me, and grins. We're sure a great 
outfit, all properly a little wary of one another. 
I don't know whether I boss too much or not 
enough. I don't give many orders, surely. 

Thus we still hit west, toward the foot-hills of 
the Tordrillo range, though the Skwentna ford is 
northwest. 

Thus the day ended in a kind of daze. The beasts 
shivering, packs dripping mud, we came out on 
a grassy terrace over a red little stream. **No 
horses ken stand more 'n a day more of this travel- 
ing," said King. And no one gave the order to 
unpack. . . . 

The reason this Diary seems so good-humored, 
is because it's always written after eating. Never 
write a field journal on an empty stomach. You'll 
hate yourself, if you do, when you read it over 
after eating. Every word of this is second thought, 
well considered and digested, with a day's good 
hard work done behind it. 

We've swallowed boiled rice with milk — which 
must be used up, as the cans are splitting open — 
reflector-bread, and tea. 

Brushed my teeth to-night. 



46 The Shameless Diary 

June 30. — Guess I was near insane this morn- 
ing, up first by an hour, as usual, boiling rice. 
Yes, from gnats; millions of them besides the 
'skeets and so small you can't see them burrow- 
ing into your skin. Then came whiffs of breeze, and 
the sun shone yellow. Forest fires, somewhere, 
thank Heaven! smoke scattering the midges. 

We packed in only four hours. Still we crossed 
tundra, but the ponds were drier. Hardly a horse 
went down, hardly a pack slipped. In the west, the 
Tordrillo Mountains glittered through the smoke 
like blue glass inlaid with ivory, Mount Spurr 
floating over all like a shadowy cap of Liberty. 
Land here from a balloon, and you would think 
this Hades Eden: green lawns of six-foot red-top 
border the tundra, with here and there a drooping 
birch, and scattered spruces, slimmer and more deli- 
cate than IVe ever seen. You expect to see coun- 
try villas, glassed piazzas, red chimneys — and there 
is nothing, nothing. It is very weird; often it's 
terrible. 

To-night we're in the tent on a lush grass slope 
by the eternal swamp. Sometimes it's up with the 
tent, sometimes not; all depends on the 'skeets. 
Jack has been washing his feet. 'Tut down it's 
for the first time," he tells me, seeing me writing. 
(I haven't washed mine at all yet.) Simon is mend- 
ing his drawers, and King has been telling a di- 



of an Explorer 47 

verting tale about a Christmas dance at Big Hole, 
Montana. I've been sitting over the crick, cutting 
the hairs off my chafed legs with the water for a 
mirror. Thus I spilt the beans just put there to 
soak. Last night we forgot to soak them, so every 
one had gripes from bean-poisoning. . . . 

The extra-condemned, in the extra-wet, inner- 
most circle of the Inferno, should be whipped on 
to mush forever in these boots the Professor has 
given us. Oh, no, this inch-soled green leather 
won't harden — that's supposed to be its great 
virtue; how could it in this floating-island coun- 
try? My uppers are ripped to rags by snags, and 
the nails have all dropped out — just like the new- 
fangled stuff of a New York "sporting" outfitter. 

July I. — Under the Tordrillo foot-hills. 

We lost the winter trail for good to-day, so I 
had to choose between routes: to reach the 
Skwentna traveling west two days more, then north 
along the foot-hills ; or by going down a big north- 
flowing stream, the Talushalitna (we suppose) 
which we crossed at noon, and must meet the 
Skwentna. The Professor encouraged me once 
when I suggested following it. But the hills beck- 
oned for two reasons, the river for only one — 
shorter air-line distance, which means nothing in 
this country, where the shortest trail is the easiest, 



48 The Shameless Diary 

not the least in miles. Hitting down the stream 
would mean two days' steady going where gouged 
banks showed we'd have to swing from shore to 
shore, besides losing a day in chopping trail ahead 
through dense alders and a swampier country yet, 
for every day traveled. Going around by the hills, 
first, no trail need be cut, and we should reach 
the ford in five days by a dry route King has 
been over. Second, and most important, we should 
pass the fabled crick where, he said. Brooks had 
prospected 1234 cents gold to the pan — which 
means wealth untold though it doesn't sound so 
— to find which had partly brought Jack with us. 
Jack gets no pay, and I've never seen a man work 
harder, even if he does lose his temper. 

We have hit for the hills. I decided quickly, 
ready to repent, but haven't yet. I'm sick of these 
swamps and ponds. Simon kicked, saying I wasn't 
facing my issues squarely. "If you want to pros- 
pect, say so," he growled. That's his selfishness. 
He'd attract a man to a God-forsaken country on a 
wild gold tale, and then conveniently forget it. 
"You'd face issues more squarely if you'd learn 
to be useful about camp," I said. Once I told the 
Professor that Simon was generally inefficient. He 
said, "Teach him to cook." Did I come to Alaska 
to start a cook-and-camping school? I told Simon 
to follow or not, as he chose. 



of an Explorer 49 

Right off he did a pretty thing. Dashes away 
with his ladies' .22 rifle, lets the horses he's driv- 
ing go to hellangone, and pops twenty times at a 
mud hen in a puddle ten yards off. Half an hour 
later, I see blood on the grass; then Jack shows 
me Big Buck's cheek dripping red. At first we 
thought it snagged, but the hole was small, and 
through the bone. Simon had shot him. "Alasky 
is no place fer little boys with girls' guns," ob- 
served Fred. 

We're camped by a large clear stream, with 
mossy springs along the bank, and wide willow 
flats below. The brutes are eating their heads off 
in bunch-grass, which is the best sort. Big Buck 
has wiped the blood from his face, and is lying 
down. Hope to Heaven he won't get poisoned, as 
we've no antiseptic along. King says it's useless 
to wash the hole — yet; and he knows best about 
such things. 

"I'd like ter see the old Professor a-draggin' 
his behind off acrost these swamps," he's just 
drawled. Yes, I'd like to see any scientific observer 
of icebergs from the deck of a plush-converted ex- 
ploring whaler fighting bronchos and 'skeets in this 
Alaskan muck. Funnier than the Sunday-school tale 
he'd write about it. I'd stake any drunken Valdez 
musher against such. 

As for King ; the frankness of the Rocky moun- 



50 The Shameless Diary 

taineer is the best fairy tale I know. He's always 
hiding what he really thinks about the trail and 
outfit while preaching the abstract laws of exist- 
ence. You can't keep him to an argument, nor tell 
him anything, except about your limited civilized 
sphere, at which he gapes and changes the sub- 
ject. Here's a typical thing. Two days ago, I heard 
Fred and Jack indulging in the favorite Alaskan 
pastime of "cussing the country" — some Sitka of- 
ficial in particular who said it would support farms. 
''It's too hard for Swedes," they said, and Swedes 
aren't considered white men up here. Now travel- 
ing's better, I'm hearing them say that Alaska's 
the only God's country, and they're coming here 
some day to ranch cattle ! But I love them all. Some- 
times I think I'm too childishly confidential, but 
can you be too intimate with your fellows in this 
soul-scarring game? You can't, and I'll stick it out 
so to the end, though to-day when I asked Jack 
and Fred to call me by my first name they seemed 
to shy. . . . 

This is a long, pointless drool for a poor musher 
in this, wet Hades, but we've made two o'clock 
camp. I've got the fruit and beans a-boiling, shaken 
a gold pan in the stream, monkeyed with the map 
and compass for a guess where on the face of the 
earth we are, and taken a bath. Now I must water 
the beans, and put in the pot the old pieces of bacon 



of a?i Explorer 51 

we don't eat and keep in the aluminum grease cup. 
We haven't been able to carry cooked beans, and 
at the half-hour noon halt have eaten from our 
pockets, bread I cook in the reflector after washing 
dishes and before packing every morning. But to- 
morrow we're going to put cooked beans in Simon's 
botanizing tin. Also, it will keep him from delaying 
the train by picking up flowers by the roots along 
the trail. 

July 2. — In the Tordrillo foot-hills. 

Thunder last night brought all-day rain. Light- 
ing the breakfast fire, I found that the Professor 
had sent us ofif with about a dozen matches, so 
Simon fired his girl's .22 into his botany-collector's 
paper for a blaze. Nothing's nastier than breaking 
a wet camp, pulling on tough, soggy cinches, know- 
ing that the wet leaks into the precious grub 
through the pack-covers where the ropes bind. Only 
worse is traveling in the wet. 

At a big lake we waded exactly thirty-four 
tributary streams. Then up, up we hit into the hills 
in dense fog, guessing at directions. Copses of 
dense alders dotted the rank grass with even, art- 
ful luxuriance. Snow-beds shrinking in the gullies 
on dead, flattened grass, were edged by white 
flowers with waxy green leaves. Black cliffs sprang 
overhead. Forever we toiled blindly over glacier- 



52 The Shameless Diary 

rounded ridges, now snow-covered and pink with 
nivalis, now tropically clad — I, fool that I was, 
shivering through the drizzle in only a sweater and 
overalls. 

Once Simon let his horses stampede past a cut 
bank over a stream down which Fred had cut 
trail. Jack was so mad he lunged out with his stick 
and batted the little Baldface into the alders down 
the slope, so he rolled over on his back, cutting 
a swath; a goner, thought I. I swam the stream, 
fighting through the brush to head off the bunch 
and get axes to chop him out. When free, he limped 
' — ^but. Lord ! you can't write the pity and despera- 
tion of such stunts. 

Curving north, again we mounted to the sky, lost 
in clouds and among mud-holes, tiny dried ponds, 
great bowlders, and beds of Labrador tea. Late, 
we struck down from under the fog; and there, 
beneath the azure cloud-edge, glimmered again 
the flat swamp country. "Timber!" we shouted to- 
gether. I made a fool of myself by mislaying the 
axes as we counseled which distant saddle ahead 
to cross; and we floundered down through alders 
to a lush grass meadow, a melting snow-bank, and 
four spruce trees. 

Over a huge, burning stump we have loaded 
cinch ropes with socks, drawers and overalls. Dun- 
nage, grub, everything, is soaked. The tea, rice, 



of an Explorer 53 

and sugar sacks are propped before the fire; the 
beans, fruit and flour, which wet hurts less, are 
cached under the tiny spruce trees, each pair of 
sacks with its saddle. Fruit only mildews, and flour 
forms a wet layer just inside the canvas, which 
dries hard as a rock, and waterproof. 

Simon is still eating, throwing away the insides 
of my biscuit. He complains they won't digest. 
"Lots of weaknesses a man don't suspect he has, 
show up in this country," observes Fred. "Too 
much botany's the trouble with him," growls Jack, 
"and I've noted it to that effect." No one's good- 
humored. 

All to-day rhymes buzzed in my head. This one 
hardest, which I can't locate : 

Let me feel maggots crawling in the sod, 
Or else — Let me be God ! 

Just now, "Hist! said Kate the Queen," is the 
line bothering me, which I think is Browning. All 
this may be very foolish, but many things called 
foolish at home seem right sensible up here. Any- 
way, most things that seem sensible at home appear 
foolish up here. Big Buck isn't poisoned yet, which 
is sound, however you take it. 



54 The Shameless Diary 



CHAPTER VI 

THE VANISHING FORD 

July 3. — Not a wink, sleeping by the burning 
stump. Its heat drew the 'skeets, and the old punk 
blazed up like a blast-furnace, nearly finishing my 
horse-blankets. 

Packed at last, and with the sun shining, we 
jumped right into rotten luck. At a big stream, the 
brown horse branded B refused to take the trail 
we'd cut through the alder jungle, and jumped in 
up to his neck — three times. Once, four beasts 
together followed him, wetting their packs, too, 
carried downstream and mixed up in snags and 
swift water, till the game seemed up. Twice I 
plunged in to my eyes and soaked my camera. 
Jack and I sweated like crazy men, and only King 
came back to help. No sooner were the four on 
the trail, than we hit a sheer alder slope, and 
chopped upward. It was too steep for the poor 
Whiteface, who staggered over backwards and 
rolled to the bottom, caught on his back in the 
vicious stems. When roped out, repacked, and 
hauled up the bank, both hind legs limped. His 
back can't stand much more. 



of an Explorer 55 

At last we crossed the 12^ cent crick. The 'skeets 
were so thick, Jack lost his temper, hurled away the 
gold-pan, and vented his wrath on Simon, simply 
because the boy stood near, with the .22 gun in his 
hand, watching. When King called something from 
a distance. Jack yelled back, "I don't want no hee 
nor haw from you, neither!" We left him to track 
us to camp; struck better going, crossing another 
divide by two small ponds under toothed, snowy 
mountains cut by vast amphitheatres. 

Then came King's turn. We sighted an old she- 
grizzly, humping up a slope with two cubs swing- 
ing after. Out Fred whips his rifle and snaps the 
magazine. The cartridges won't fit the barrel. He 
jams them and swears; studies them. They're .303 
Savage all right, which the gun should be. Mrs. 
Bear lifts her fat rear over the hill, laughing 
a good bear laugh, I guess. Fred looks at the barrel. 
It's a .30-30 Winchester! If the Seattle gun-store 
clerk that palmed off that rifle on us had been 
within fifty miles, he'd have thought quick about 
his life insurance. Of course it was our fault. We 
bought a Savage, handed it to the clerk to put 
on peep sights, which he put on another gun, hand- 
ing it back to us next day ; and we neglected to ex- 
amine before freighting it. Yet, right now that 
clerk's life, were he here in Alaska, wouldn't be 
worth that old she-bear's laugh. 



56 The Shameless Diary 

Here in camp, we're baking in the reflector with 
a green willow fire, which is like running a steam 
engine by burning matches under the boiler. Simon, 
who has been off after ptarmigan, comes back with 
a mess of green fern-tops that he wants to eat 
to tune up his insides, and is asking us how to 
cook them. Jack returns furious with the 'skeets, 
and "whoever lied about the gold in that crick." 
He panned just four colors. Thus we sit and dis- 
cuss how big the Talushalitna River must be where 
it meets the Skwentna; how this gravel wash got 
among these volcanic mountains. . . . 

We're going to bed. Jack is to sleep next the 
tent door to try and keep the 'skeets out, for every 
one else has failed. Simon will soon suspend from 
the cheese-cloth, fake mosquito-proof door, his 
spectacles and watch — our only one. He will for- 
get to wind the watch. But he is long-suffering and 
kicks at nothing. Yet I prefer volatile men like 
Jack to the easy-going sort. I'd rather see a man 
vent at God and Nature the wrath you can't help 
feeling in this country, by breaking loose and rip- 
ping things up now and then, rather than swallow 
it all mutely. The Simon sort don't feel the wrath; 
haven't the sensitiveness. They don't forbear. But 
which travels furthest, and, reaching his end, gets 
the keenest joy? Yet, not he who has forborne. 

The horse-bell has the mosquito-jumps. This 



of an Explorer 57 

bending over pots and panniers makes my back 
ache. Hands are so dirty you could plant potatoes 
in their creases. 

July 4. — 'Skeets drove the horses back two miles 
beyond the little lakes, and we weren't packed till 
eleven. Traveling was bully, all high up over snow- 
fields and meadows. Three hours, and the Skwentna 
glittered far below, a dim flashing network of bars 
and thready channels. Mountain range after range 
glimmered blue and snowy through the haze be- 
yond. We sat to gaze, eating four biscuits apiece 
from my mackinaw pocket, washed down with 
water from a snow-puddle. Said Simon, *TVe de- 
cided you can't hunt birds and drive pack horses 
at the same time." We sighed. At last! But in this 
resolve there's no repentance for leaving the horses 
he drives to wander off and slip packs, while he 
waddles after ptarmigan that he's too blind to see, 
and couldn't hit even if he wasn't. Simply because 
we went so fast to-day it winded him awfully, chas- 
ing up a hill to catch us! 

We mounted a rock peak, and chopped an end- 
less way through alder jungles to a meadow by a 
gorged stream. Here we're camped. The sorrel 
branded P. R., stampeding down through the scrub, 
shipped the unwieldly box Simon keeps his roots 
in. A box has no business on a pack horse, any- 



58 The Shameless Diary 

way, and I felt like leaving it in the muck, which 
wouldn't be loyal; so back I plugged a mile, and 
repacked it for the kid. . . . 

I'm shaving in the reflector. The P. R. Sorrel 
has kicked King's right ankle black and blue, and 
I have wrapped it with electric tape. Simon has 
produced from his dunnage a mashed box of wet 
candy, and is doling us out pieces, one by one. 
Says he's going to save some for his birthday. 
Now, instead of chucking away the biscuit insides, 
he has a way of frying them — monopolizing the 
fire and the pans as we need them for the com- 
mon weal. Drat him ! He won't believe it when we 
tell him fried bread's harder to digest than doughy. 
But he doesn't bother me much. I only wish he had 
more initiative. I suppose it's racial that he hasn't. 
The Jew has always been the selfish follower-on, 
the scavenger of civilization, just as we Yankees 
have been the bullying pioneers. Hobson's choice. 
One thing, Simon doesn't lose his temper, and I 
believe he'd stand a lot of pounding in this life. 

July 5. — At the Skwentna! 

The watch stopped in the night, and I guessed 
at five o'clock. We ate, packed, and plunged into 
the worse day yet, going hardly five miles. 

Fred's ankle was very sore, and I offered to lay 
over. He wouldn't decide, and seemed ready to 



of an Explorer 59 

move. I asked Jack's advice. "No man could make 
me travel this country with a foot like that," he 
broke out, ''but that's King's business." And King 
began packing. 

By noon, it seemed that we'd been traveling a 
year, hewing down, down, stem by stem, among 
the iron-limbed alders. Winter snows flatten, 
toughen, bind, and bend them into tempered 
springs. You can't move an inch without an axe, 
or getting gouged in the face. And then to drive 
fourteen exhausted, half-wild bronchos, stamped- 
ing, snorting, as you hear the whooping-screeching 
rip of canvas — see the cinches dangling from the 
brush! Oh, our hot oaths as we hunt and gather 
the packs, chopping a clear space to pack, fighting 
mosquitoes! And for every foot the beasts travel 
we cover forty, dashing forward to head them, un- 
snarl, drag from the mud. 

Simon hasn't the least control over his brutes. 
Just says "Git up!" moves a fat leg slowly — and 
they're all fighting crazy off the trail. Once to-day 
the Roan rubbed off his pack, and I chased him 
back half the day's going. Simon simply waited by 
the load, without carrying it to the open for re- 
packing. I slopped over for the first time on the 
trip. The horses he helped pack, I said, always 
slipped cinches first. "That's a lie!" he blazed out 
— "or at least you're mistaken." , "Better make it 



60 The Shameless Diary 

'mistaken/ " said I, and Jack grinned, as we hauled 
the cinch. King says I draw the cinches too tight 
— perhaps I do, thank God — and crowd the beasts 
on the trail. 

We reached a big crick paralleling the river. 
The banks were slewed and clogged with drift and 
willows. We were an hour crossing and ploughing 
through the quicksands, finding the lead for trail 
beyond. Simon was swept off his feet fording it. 
He didn't seem in much danger, though the foam- 
collars on the rocks bowled him pretty hard, and 
before I could reach the water, Jack, who's been 
talking as if he'd like to kill the kid, jumped in 
and made a rescue. We crossed, each braced on 
a pole, and lost our feet only for a few yards. No 
man can stand more than waist-high in a glacier 
stream, so the runts suffer. 

Cutting trail with me on the other side and pil- 
ing brush to keep the beasts from jumping into 
the crick where it turned and gouged the bank, 
Jack suddenly lost his temper for no reason I 
could see, and hurled off his axe murderously into 
the brush. Then he snagged his eye, and sat down, 
quivering for ten minutes on the sand-bar, his head 
in his hands, so no one dared speak to him. 

The river woods were rich and wonderful, and 
late we came out by the Swentna. Rose vines in 
full bloom, each with countless flowers of every 



of an Explorer 61 

scarlet hue, clung to tall spruces; immense dark 
violets and meads of anemones dotted the moss. 
Then opened below the mile-wide wilderness of 
the river's willow bars and sandy channels; came 
its low, metallic roar in the hot sunlight. We were 
nearly dead. The 'skeets were crazing us. The 
idiot skinny Bay ran amuck, and we were half an 
hour finding her pack and catching her. I sug- 
gested camp. Fred seemed to want to, but wouldn't 
suggest. I asked Jack. "I don't give my opinion 
no more," he shouted. '1 give it once to-day, and 
no attention was paid to it." Thus we camped 
here. . . . 

King's ankle has turned blue, but hurts little 
in walking. Here in the tent, he's pining for the 
Fourth-o'-July dance at his home in Montana. 
''But I wouldn't be no good with this ankle," he 
drawls. Simon actually fetched glacier-water from 
the river for cooking supper without being told, 
but mired himself with the pots halfway up the 
bank, so I had to come to his rescue. Then he 
cooked a weird mess of fern-tops and dried-pea 
soup to discipline his insides. Now he's out cook- 
ing fruit — for another cure. Jack is putting tea- 
leaves on his sore eye, and reading the Fortnightly 
Review with the other. Our portable library con- 
tains "Pelham" (Bulwer-Lytton), *'Ardath" (Marie 
C.) — the Professor's favorite, *Tom Sawyer," mine, 



62 The Shameless Diary 

a magazine or two, and some funny books on the 
''Hints to Explorers" order. King, who is now 
asleep with his mouth open, and Simon, don't read. 
Feels like rain. 

I marvel that Jack isn't more cut-up at not find- 
ing his Eldorado in that crick. Some one's made 
a mistake, but he bears no malice; accepts it as if 
he'd only lost a sock or half a dollar, willing to 
plug right along. It must always be thus with pros- 
pectors ; each means to their vast ends ever fizzles 
out, ever becomes more insignificant as the great 
dream grows. . . . 

Fred says that he thinks from this camp Brooks 
traveled one day to the ford, going down the river ; 
but his uncertainty worries me. 

July 6. — The very devil of a day! Rain splashed 
the tent at daylight, and sourly we ate a soggy 
breakfast, though I had lit the fire on the first 
match — nearly our last. We hardly saw Brooks' 
track once, threading meadows, slews, ponds, steep 
• scarps. One fiery 'skeet cloud hummed with us, and 
the sodden drip of rain washed their poison like 
sharp acid down our streaming necks and faces. 
Once we traveled three miles in a circle, coming 
out in the same old tundra; halted an hour to find 
the lead out of a meadow; struck the crick we 
crossed yesterday, and chawed on soaked biscuit. 



of an Explorer 63 

Into its snags and drift-piles we stoned the brutes, 
and Simon, jumping on the White Grub horse, was 
bucked off, ker splash! 

Unsuspiciously we struck a meadow and a quiet 
stream, fording its countless arms through dense 
willows. Every horse went down, scrambling up 
an old beaver dam. Floundering on, I suddenly 
saw the water rising fast up their legs. So the big 
rats had just felled the last tree somewhere below 
to choke a new dam's opening! We were trapped. 
King and Jack ahead were hewing trail through 
willows. Into the pond I had to drive the horses; 
out we had to get like a flash, the shortest way. 
Each after each was mired, rolling about in the 
muck and rising water, clinging like spiders to 
the dam-edge. It was one of those fearful Alaskan 
moments, when you realize all may be lost at the 
give of a single horse-tendon — and you care, and 
don't give a damn, oh, so intensely! If I gave a 
hopeless look, as we beat and dragged and un- 
packed them, Fred shook his head, meaning per- 
haps it was all futile; but he worked so leisurely, 
that somehow we did get the train out with every 
ounce of grub soaked, sloshed through more ponds, 
climbed a bench to camp. 

"Here's where Brooks stopped," said King, 
"and I guess he was two days more from here 
making the ford." A wonderful sense of locality 



64 The Shameless Diary 

and power to smell out the easiest way across bad 
country has he, but no visual memory, or power 
to tell you and act on half what he does know. 
I know we must cross the Talushalitna before meet- 
ing the Professor at the ford. Fred has said all 
along he believes that the ford is this side of the 
tributary, which he doesn't remember having 
crossed. Now this camp suddenly recalls every- 
thing — that we must cross the Talushalitna, that 
while fording it last year the Government horses 
wet their packs, that there's no horsefeed and so 
no camp near it ! 

We've built fires to dry the blankets, to ^leep 
in, and because wet ones gall the beasts' backs. 
Jack and Fred are hunting a dry spruce to sleep 
under — it still rains — and Simon, fussing with the 
tent, is swearing beautifully. 

Jack, who began life working in the Alleghany 
coal mines, afterward became a plumber, and is tell- 
ing the secrets of that trade. Simon is drawing him 
out, giggling, and condescendingly repeating Jack's 
serious expressions as to the fight for existence he's 
been through, in the way I don't like. Fred takes 
up the tale with a Boccaccio-like adventure — Mon- 
tana characters and local color. . . . (There's 
the climax.) I've wrapped my feet up in a 
mackinaw, folded the driest parts of horse-blankets 
in strips across my stomach, thus to sleep. We all 



of an Explorer 65 

get pains in our legs every night, for we never 
dry off — rheumatics, I guess. 

July 7. — Anywhere. 

And still no Skwentna ford. Of course, now 
we're wishing we'd gone down the Talushalitna, 
which still eludes us. 

The rain stopped at dawn, and we made good 
time till we hit a swag where Fred said Brooks 
got lost last year. Sure, it's the best lose-yourself- 
country ever: flat in the large, with tag-ends of 
benches and ridges, all hurled together at right 
angles; one-pond swamps, timber, cup-like mead- 
ows with grass to your shoulder. At three o'clock, 
after eating beans poured from the botany tin 
out of my old bandana, we reached a longish lake 
with a gravelly bottom. "Yes, sir, and there's 
Brooks' next camp," pointed King across a slew. 
Confound such a memory! 

So here by the lake, Fred has a big, yellow cow- 
lily stuck in his hair. Simon is mending his over- 
alls with what Jack calls a base-ball stitch. Jack, 
in the red diary I gave him, is writing nasty things 
about all of us, I'm sure. And no mosquitoes! — 
though it's their field-hour, for rain threatens. 
Who'll ever write the Alaskan mosquitoad? Why, 
for instance, are the small, yellow ones commoner 
than the big black sons-o'-guns in these parts? 



66 The Shameless Diary 

When it blows hard, do they sink into the grass 
and sneak along after you, so the same ones at- 
tack when the gust's over, or does a new troop 
come out? Does the same thirsty cloud follow you 
for miles, or do the gratified gluttons drop back, 
kindly giving 'way to new empty-bellies? Where 
are they now? There's good fodder for scientific 
research, to benefit Alaskan mankind. And here's 
more : I saw two little yellow frogs in a swamp 
to-day, but held my tongue so Simon wouldn't 
harpoon them. 

A pair of sneakers up here lasts just two days. 
I sleep in my Scotch homespuns, and have just 
learned to keep my pipe and tobacco in their pock- 
ets daytimes, not to have to dry the plug each 
night by the fire in the large dough spoon. My over- 
alls are worn through at the knees from puttering 
over cook-fires, and all my fingers are a quarter 
inch too thick and cracking at the joints. . . . 

We are telling stories and limericks. I'm going 
to sleep by Jack's private blanket-drying fire. Won- 
der where the Professor is, and if the 'skeets have 
chewed off his long hair. 



of an Explorer 67 

CHAPTER VII 

LAST STRAWS 

July 8.— Sh-sh-sh ! 

In two hours we made a large clear stream be- 
tween high diorite cliffs — the Talushalitna ! Every 
time I leaped behind a horse's pack in fording it, 
a bunch of them tore back to shore; so I crossed 
alone on foot, through a hundred tickliest yards 
of icy water. Then we covered endless meadows 
and one-pond swamps, purple with iris, golden 
with arnica. Jack's horses stampeded, and he flew 
into a passion. Now we slid down grassy benches, 
to a silty slew, where the bent willows were rust- 
red with glacial mud — from river-floods! Glad 
omen! But never was reapproach to a river so 
vanishing : more sloughs and silt flats, a level spruce 
forest growing from white moss and roses ; at last 
a lead along an endless, gouged drift-pile, and we 
heard shouts, and saw two tents on a gravel island 
in the middle of the brown river. The Professor, 
Miller, and two Siwashes, one big, one little, ca- 
vorted across to us in a long boat. Our leader first 
gravely shook my hand and smiled. "Hello, Dunn," 
said he (like that prig Stanley's icy, "Mr. Living- 



68 The Shameless Diary 

stone, I believe?" when he met the missionary in 
darkest Africa, thought I). ''You've done excel- 
lently. We arrived here only this morning." Mos- 
quito hats choked all of them. They blind and 
deafen, and if a man as God made him can't stand 
the 'skeets, he's no right up in this country. 

We started to ford, from the south shore to the 
north. The Bay Dunnage mare was mired in a 
quicksand and pulled out before we even unpacked 
and loaded the boat. It was the best place ever for 
putting in horses to swim, a cut bank they couldn't 
climb up on their side, a narrow current nearly all 
in one channel and shooting across diagonally to 
the other shore, where a long bar stretched below. 
I crossed to the island — only a shallow channel's 
on the other side — to dry the wet grub at once, as 
the sugar is syruping away, and the bacon is green 
with mould. There I heard Jack and King stoning 
and shouting like maniacs, sweeping the bunch into 
the current with stretched cinches. Miller was pop- 
ping his camera at them. At that instant the P. R. 
Sorrel, leading all in mid-stream, made back for 
shore! Snorting in spasms, the whole crew fol- 
lowed. The Professor and I dashed into the boat, 
and hit out to head them off. Jack tore down the 
south bank, yelling and rocking them like a crazy 
man. Three or four miraculously climbed out on 
his side, despite him and the cut bank. Again all 



of an Explorer 69 

depended on one fiber of one horse. We in the 
boat got below them on Jack's side, but they shot 
past, all headed with the current, straight for the 
snag-pile at the bend. That meant drowning for 
all — when one beast turned by some miracle, and 
seemed to lead all, grunting more and more faintly, 
to the tail end of the bar, saving them by ten yards ! 
So the whole train was scattered on both sides 
of the river. We counted them again and again, 
and made only ten out of the fourteen. We shouted 
and shouted from bank to bank. No use. We found 
the three that had scrambled up the bad bank, and 
Jack had an idea that the Light Gray had gone 
with them. But we sighted him on the north bank. 
So only one remained missing, and in vain we 
dragged the brush and back-trailed. At last Simon, 
who is always three days behind time, said he'd 
seen Dark Buck shooting straight down with the 
current around the drift pile, when the bunch had 
made for the bar. The Professor, Miller, and he, 
being on the island with the boat, pursued in it 
downstream. We swam the three beasts that had 
climbed the cut bank, standing waist deep in the 
quicksand, hurling rocks. They made the bar well ; 
we crossed swimming, and gorged on oatmeal and 
potatoes; then drove the bunch from the island 
across the shallow channel, safe on the north side 
of the Skwentna, at last. 



70 The Shameless Diary 

In an hour the Professor came back. "We've 
lost another horse," said he hopelessly — his face 
is growing white in this Alaskan game, as mine 
gets tanned and ruddy. I wouldn't believe that, 
and King said to me, "Simon and the Professor 
couldn't find a horse trail if you rubbed their noses 
in it. I believe that Buck has landed." So I sent 
him off with Jack on the same search. It was after 
ten o'clock, but in an hour, Miller appeared alone, 
tracking the boat up the bar, while Jack and King 
were driving the lost beast up through the brush 
on the north shore. Shot out by the current from 
the drift-pile, he had landed where the Professor 
said that landing was impossible, and had not 
looked. It takes a lot to kill a cayuse. All was a 
sort of roast for the Professor, and I think he 
felt it. 

Now he is fussing about, a bunch of shaving 
paper tied to his breast pocket, stroking every one 
the right way, and talking with beautiful optimism 
about how very soon we'll reach the pass which 
we must cross in the main Alaskan Range, south 
of McKinley, before striking northeast along its 
northwest face, to the foot of the great mountain. 

We still have fifty miles of wet country to cross, 
due north to Keechatna River, which we must 
ford to its north bank, following it up due west to 
the pass. The boat, thus, is going back down the 



of an Explorer 71 

Skwentna, till it meets the Yentna, a northern tribu- 
tary; up the Yentna, to its western branch, the 
Keechatna, up that, to the head of navigation, 
where we meet and again ford the horses ; put all 
the outfit on them, abandon the boat, and hit for 
the pass. Thus it travels three sides of a parallelo- 
gram, while the pack train covers its fourth. 

The Professor, who must learn packing some 
day is going to stick with the boat, still taking 
with him Miller, whom I want in Simon's stead 
with the horses. When I asked for Miller, he 
smiled, *'You have got on so excellently as you 
are, I think we'll try it so again." 

The gondoliers say that they had fair sledding 
on the river, though the 'skeets were cruel. The 
Professor confided that once he thought Miller 
would yield up his soul to their tortures, and pro- 
pounded a weird theory that their poison in the 
big doses we get, injures and depresses the blood. 
As usual, where Siwashes and Tyonek men fore- 
told good traveling, it was bad, and vice versa; 
and the awful canyon just above this camp — one 
of the country's bugbears, which they poled to 
this morning — was calm and navigable. So runs 
the glass of Alaskan truth and lies. . . . 

I am writing by a driftwood fire on the open 
sand and gravel of the bar. Boxes and tins on the 
silt-powdered logs tell of the ease of boat-travel. 



72 The Shameless Diary 

The Professor has set up an elaborate tripod, and 
is doing things with one eye to a white mountain 
of the Talkeetna Range upstream, which he is go- 
ing to name. Think of that ! I wish he would show 
quality of some sort. He's so kind and colorless. 
I like him — but then, I haven't hit the trail with 
him yet. He's just given me a pair of bedroom 
slippers "to wear about camp," he says. I thanked 
him. He uses "How?" instead of "What?" when 
you ask him a question. 

July 9. — So here's the first day ended on the 
trail, where Brooks got cold feet last year, and 
said that King must hit for the hills, or the Gov- 
ernment would have no more horses. 

We had only four beasts down at once, two 
mired in beaver dams, two snagged in a sort of 
pitfall. . . . 

We've built six smudges, for here in camp the 
big, yellow-bellied horse-flies blacken the birches. 
I've been drying the tea that was on Dark Buck 
when he floundered about in a mud-hole. It's 
shaving-time for the reflector. King, having climbed 
a tree to inspect the country ahead, is running 
straws through the big flies, saying as they sail 
aloft with wispy kite-tails, "That's how I like to 
serve you gentlemen." Jack is making a pipe from 
a birch-log, and Simon is giving us some rigmarole 



of an Explorer 73 

about Ricardo and Malthus, which no one is Hs- 
tening to. 

We're in a plague — green inch-worms. Jack has 
just looked up in forgetful surprise, and said, 
"What's that dropping sound all around?" Drying 
blankets, you have to pick off hundreds to avoid 
roasting them — en blanquette. They form a scum 
on the packs. Every leaf and twig they have eaten ; 
the alders and willows are pestilence-stricken. The 
whole country now seems wintry, now burned over, 
as they hit the high places for the birches. Their 
webs blind you on the trail, as you fish for them 
down your back. We have to eat in the tent. At 
supper, Simon counted thirteen on the inside of 
the canvas, and after a thorough house-cleaning. 
"That's unlucky for the worms," said he, squash- 
ing them with his spoon. 

But I hear the sputter-sputter of boiling Bayos 
— covered, let's trust — so all's well on earth to- 
night. 

July lo. — ^Jack carried out his threat and sneaked 
Simon's mosquito hat into the fire this morning, 
while the kid was brushing his teeth, or drying 
his socks, or doing one of the thousand useless 
stunts he devises while we're at work. He began 
crying for it as we cinched Brown B horse. Funny, 
but no one knew, as King said, "where it had 



74 The Shameless Diary 

went to." So Simon sprigged himself out with 
ferns till he looked like a hayseed, and as he 
puffed through the worst swamps, Jack hollered, 
"Say, Jerushy, haow's the crops?" 

In one, where sweet bay grew with buckbrush 
from the sphagnum, suddenly McKinley, Foraker, 
and the whole range flashed out, seeming to float 
in mid-air over the haze, like magic icebergs. 
They lay between Yenlo Mountain — a low peak 
east of the Yentna, up which the Professor and 
Miller were to be plugging to-day to get a good 
look-see at the valley — and the nearer, opalescent 
peaks of the great range to the west, where we 
hope to enter it. Still square-shouldered and mas- 
sive, each was tricked out wonderfully with cloud 
and shadow in rocky interstices unimaginably cold 
and deep, with ridges of bewildering lift and sweep, 
and a whiteness unknown to earthly snows. South- 
west of Foraker, Mount Russell lifted a perfect 
concaved spire. Simon saw them half an hour after 
every one else, stopped the train, and ran up to 
announce his discovery. "I told yer," said Jack. 
''He's got eyes sharper 'n a tool-house rat, now 
he's no net on." And we must pass far to the west 
around them, getting our next view from their 
other side. 

The next minute Jack exploded. The horses I 
drove balked. He was just ahead, and stooped for 



of an Explorer 75 

a drink. Quickly they tromped over him, though 
I yelled a halt. He cursed me furiously. Soon he 
was right behind when I had two beasts mired. 
I asked him not to drive his brutes over me. He 

shouted, *'By , I'll give you some of your own 

medicine. Git up!" ... At noon he was still 
peevish, and when I asked him to come over where 
Fred and I lay in the long slough grass, spitting 
tobacco-juice into a little stream, he shouted some- 
thing about a "rotten, lunch," and didn't 

budge. And we were eating a can of mildewed 
prunes ! 

Which all reminds me of what Jack said yes- 
terday, and I wanted to digest before recording. 
As we pulled away from the Skwentna, he came 
to me, almost humbly, and suggested that he go 
back to the Inlet in the boat with the two Indians, 
when we leave it on the Keechatna and put the 
whole outfit on the horses. "You only have grub 
enough for five men," said he, "and it won't last 
the six of us." "Darn the grub, there'll be enough," 
I said. "Isn't the real reason you want to quit 
because you're sore on the outfit?" "It makes me 
sore how Simon always spits on me," he answered. 
I couldn't get him to cite an instance of that, but 
I knew he meant the times when the kid jollies 
Jack about having been a plumber. Appearing dis- 
turbed and disappointed, I urged Jack to stay on, 



76 The Shameless Diary 

putting my desire on the personal basis — the true 
one — on which he came with us, getting no pay. 
He said that he was pleased with the way I had 
treated him. I said that he couldn't expect us all 
to know how to shift up here as well as a sour- 
dough like him. He said that he realized that — 
though you'd seldom think so from his acts. He 
added that King was sore on the outfit, too, and 
would have quit long ago, only he felt he was 
"sort of contracted with the Professor." That from 
King doesn't worry me. He likes to air our troubles, 
aggravated by the stress of travel, to any one ; 
and Jack he's naturally most in sympathy with. 
But King will never quit us. I was telling Jack 
frankly that I was disappointed in him, when the 
Professor hove in sight, and I lit out as Jack re- 
peated the short-grub plaint to him. Simon, who 
had seen us, wanted with excited suspicion to 
know what Jack had been saying. "Oh, nothing," 
said I. 

Spite of all, I do mightily enjoy Jack's com- 
pany. There's something very compelling about 
him, and no malice nor yellowness whatever. He's 
simple. Yet I think that of the crowd, except Simon 
whom we can never lose of course, we could best 
spare Jack. I can't let personal wishes block the 
expedition's success. I remember how I laughed 
at Simon when once he said that Jack wouldn't 



of an Explorer 77 

see the game through. Again, I read men 
wrong. . . . 

On we fought through worms and flies, having 
at most three horses down. Now, all their tails are 
swishing furiously outside the tent, and soon we'll 
hear them clattering through the dishes. Simon 
must be homesick. He's been showing me the pic- 
tures of his pa and ma, which he keeps with his 
eye-wash, tooth-wash, nose-wash, and the rest of 
his drug outfit in that little bag. G ! . . . 

The beast munching grass at my ear is fouling 
the guy-ropes. King sleeps. Jack is reading the Fort- 
nightly Review — and I can imagine the scornful 
comments he's making to himself at its long-winded 
phrases. 

The tag of verse to-day, was: 

One thing is truth, and all the rest is lies ; 
The flower that once has blown forever dies. 

I think it's from 'The City of Dreadful Night." 
Wish that philosophy applied to yellow-bellied 
horse-flies, too. Good-night. 

July II. — To-day, Brooks' blazes (we see about 
two a day) kept leading us three miles forward, 
then three miles straight back. We couldn't lose 
countless slews of the Yentna, which infuriated 
Jack, so he sulked continually and wouldn't eat 



78 The Shameless Diary 

our stale biscuit and drink the stagnant glacier 
water in the long swamp grass stirred by the horses 
at the noon halt. Yet — "Say," he'd shout later, 
laughing as by chance we took to high ground, 
"we've gone wrong. There's more water over 
there." The Government topographer that King 
says blazed for Brooks must have reasoned in cir- 
cles. Any drunk could have crossed this stretch 
drier and straighten At last we skirted a quiet 
lake among strange little hills and sprucy mead- 
ows lined with otter trails, creeping close to its 
rock shore, thinking our troubles passed. . . . 

Never! This can't last much longer. Zzzzzz- 
Zzzzzzzzz! — meaning the yellow-striped flies. It 
makes you dizzy to watch them swarming over 
the kicking brutes. Jack and King make caustic 
cracks about God's mean notions in creating them. 
They're as big as bumble-bees, still crusting sunny 
sides of the birches. Eight smudges surround us, 
and here in the tent, I squash them through the 
canvas, roosting in bunches on the outside. The 
slew-water — and a quarter mile away, too; we're 
a mile beyond the lake — stains the bean juice thick 
and purple as ink. The swish of horse tails is in- 
cessant. There go the brutes now, fouling the guy- 
ropes, giving the tent d. ts. The flies are driving 
them wild. King says they can't stand another day 
of this. Half the hair is eaten off their necks and 



of an Explorer 79 

haunches, and you can grab the pests off their 
faces in handfuls dripping with blood. The strain 
on any one with human feehng is dreadful. I 
never realized before how animals can suffer. . . . 
Bang! There they go again, clattering through 
the dishes. Stamp! stamp! stamp! Hobbled, they 
couldn't graze enough, and would burn their hoofs 
in the smudges. . . . 

A 'skeet in my ear is driving me wild. Jack has 
blown tobacco smoke into it, and Simon squirted 
in strong tea through a pipestem. We're praying 
for rain. 

July 12 — Answered. Alone, as usual, I rustled 
breakfast in the drip, fighting slow 'skeet torture for 
an hour before another hand stirred. 

Two miles! — and all around grinned the sick 
spruces and punctured sphagnum of tundra, and 
tundra in the rain, all humps and gridded with 
moose trails is the boudoir of Hades. In, out, and 
around we floundered; hunting leads, scattering 
the train, till Jack and I missed the lean Bay Dun- 
nage mare, and then lost ^ourselves hunting her in 
the maze of tracks. Sense of locality — which maybe 
I'm losing anyway — all went to pot. Simon yawned, 
rested, and unpacked the White Grub horse to 
make himself coffee. King walked almost back to 
camp, having wrongly counted but thirteen tracks 



80 The Shameless Diary 

in the mud of the last slew crossed. I found the 
beast at last, and back-trailed for King, wearing 
out my neck shouting. He wasn't at camp or on 
the trail. So he was lost. Again, responsibility 
helped the 'skeets bite. That ghastly four hours! 
till Fred appeared calmly — I couldn't hear his tale 
— and we struggled on. 

Suddenly King swore that we were but two 
miles from the Keechatna, his elastic memory now 
stretching the right way. And as our hearts rose, 
the beasts, of course, struggled into the worst 
swamps yet. The river had flooded meadows belly- 
deep. Across, we half-swam to an alder swamp that 
Satan must have sat up night a-plotting; there to 
react all the desperate old tragic stunts. Down went 
four beasts together in soupy mud-holes, snagged 
in roots, worming necks under big logs. Jack and 
I worked like beavers at the old tricks of kicking 
their eyes and watering nostrils, till they gurgled 
serpent hisses, and prodded heels waved. King 
chopped out the snags under their stomachs, deftly 
avoiding nicking off any chunk of flesh. We hauled 
on stiff and mud-hid cinches, fought with soggy 
grub and gritty-wet blankets, in repacking, at last. 
And not fifty yards away, swirled the brown tide 
of the Keechatna — our haven! "A man that 'ud 
take horses on a trail like this," yelled Jack, his 
temper switched to the antipodes at the reaction, 



of an Explorer 81 

**they'd lynch him in the Valdez country! I'd help 
to do it, too." 

Now, we're lying on three solid feet of spruce 
boughs spread on soggy quicksand, yet sloshing our 
backs in the ooze if we move — the worst camp 
made yet. You could cut the air in this tent, thick 
with the stink of sore-rubbed horse-blankets which 
we must sleep in, and the mosquito-corpse fetor of 
never-washed clothing. Rheumatism numbs my side. 
Where's the Professor? He ought to meet us here 
now. Eaten by 'skeets and green worms on Yenlo 
Mountain, I guess. Well, here's for a page of "Tom 
Sawyer," to bring on drowsiness — but sleep, never ! 

July 13. — After two pages last night, I heard 
voices, and jumped up with Jack. Miller and the 
Professor were landing from the boat. It was 

bright eleven o'clock. *'The of a time to be 

traveling," growled King. They had climbed Yenlo 
the day before, eating gophers — picket-pins. King 
calls them — while the 'skeets ate them. They'd 
failed to cut out the creatures' scent bags, such 
as muskrats have, and Miller was still coughing 
and spitting from their delicious taste. "Yes, we 
observed McKinley and Foraker from the top, and 
I obtained a very excellent idea of the country," 
said the Professor. He needed it. I said that I 
was glad. 



82 The Shameless Diary 

They were satisfied with eating cold rice and tea. 
We shunted them from crowding into our tent, 
helped the Professor pitch his conical silk affair 
on the only dry inch of ground for miles, and I 
rustled him boughs in the dark. I saw him work 
for the first time. Miller says that in the boat he 
sits and steers, never poling or tracking, always 
having to try both sides of his paddle before he 
discovers how to veer the way he wants. Ashore, 
he still fusses with his instruments. Both, and 
even the two Siwashes, wore 'skeet hats. I was 
ashamed. . . . 

This morning we swam the horses to camp on 
the north side of the river, leading one by one be- 
hind the boat. Tiresome, but no more Skwentna 
games for us. 

Simon is beginning to take notice about cook- 
ing and packing. He mixed all the panniers up 
to-day, angering me, and Miller dryly observed, 
"Fve read about such fellows as him, but I never 
thought Fd see one." *1 call him the fifth wheel," 
said Jack, "and have noted it to that effect in my 
diary." He tried to put fruit in the dried onion 
bag. Now the onions go in their own sack to- 
morrow, or Simon goes into the river. Fred got 
much joy out of the kid^s wanting to pack last 
night's spruce boughs across the river for to-night's 
camp. He and Jack always build a big drying-fire 



of an Explorer 83 

after supper, and wall it in with blankets hung 
on cinches. When Simon, who can't light a fire 
to save his neck, hangs his wet pants on their lines, 
they're promptly thrown off. They dried three pairs 
of blankets for me to-night — an unheard-of com- 
pliment. 

The Professor fusses, fusses, fusses with his in- 
struments, which he carries in two big boxes, that 
will make trouble when we begin to pack every- 
thing. He opens a plush case, peeks in, wipes off 
the brass, closes case again — and there you are. 
That's hitting the trail real hard. That's scientific 
exploring. 

All the food is soaking, yet no one but me seems 
to worry. All day I've been trying to dry it with 
fires, and cook Alaska rapid-fire, smokeless straw- 
berries — meaning beans — at the same time. The 
sugar is syruping, and the bacon's mildewed. This 
is the first day in seventeen that we have rested, 
and King has lost his rubber shoes. . . . 

To-morrow, we strike west up the Keechatna, 
hoping to find, in about a hundred miles, a pass 
leading through the Alaskan range to its north- 
west face. Brooks found one, and Captain Her- 
ron in 1899, navigating to this point in a launch, 
found another. Across the mountains, he nearly 
died of starvation. . . . Our boat, with the 
same crew, taking everything but the bacon and 



84 The Shameless Diary 

the seven sacks of flour, will follow the horses till 
the river gets too swift. On both sides its meadows 
are flooded four feet deep; worse than last year, 
says King of tricky memory. 

And still it rains. We'll be growing web feet 
and feathers yet. 

July 14. — The worst day yet, King says; but 
I was too dazed, cold, and wet to feel it. The 
horses had starved all night. They crossed a slew 
to a grassless island in the still-rising river, and 
were too foolish to wade back, so I went swim- 
ming after them. We even put the bacon into the 
boat, and the seven flour sacks went singly on the 
seven strongest horses, the worn-out others carry- 
ing only their saddles. And the hippodrome swim 
through grass and willow meadows, to the first 
dry land, ten miles up-river, began. 

I really lost my temper with Simon for the first 
time. Once, crossing silt and quicksand, where the 
water roared through willow roots to fill inland 
ponds, and one minute you had a footing and the 
next ducked in up to your neck, he shouted, and 
halted the train. I couldn't hear what he said, the 
river roared and the horses sloshed so. I called 
"Hello!" again and again. He didn't answer, but 
when at last I went to move on, there he was, 
only five yards off. He'd deliberately kept me up 



of an Explorer 85 

to my neck in the icy water. I swore at him. He 
moved on sullenly. 

Then Jack lost the Light Gray. I went back 
alone, and found her right in the middle of the 
trail, up to her neck in mud, wedged between roots. 
Got her out, and fell plumb into the river myself. 
She mired herself three or four times more, and 
once I thought was a goner. Poor little beast! She 
loses her head in tight places, and struggles as if 
crazed. It's fearful when they close their eyes, lay 
their necks in the mud, grunt comfortably, and 
never try to shake the 'skeets crusted on their 
necks. 

Later we swam the whole bunch, riding them, 
across a deep slew, and climbed a wooded terrace to 
camp. Half an hour after the boat landed. . . . 

I've been urging the Professor to appoint duties 
and organize some system of camp and pack work. 
Jack and Fred are beginning to kick, and justly, 
with a do-nothing like Simon along. An expedi- 
tion like this won't run itself. Unless its head, as 
I've been trying to do, sets an example by getting 
up first, starting breakfast, and leading tirelessly 
in every job, he's got to give orders, or growling 
begins. I told the Professor this. He will neither 
order, nor lead. He just fusses with his aneroids 
— junk, I call it all — and like most tenderfeet, is 
a continuous boot-changer. Simon butted in during 



86 The Shameless Diary 

our talk, so I observed that the 'skeets were pretty 
thick, and Ht out. I've talked over this system busi- 
ness with King and Jack, which may not be right 
and loyal, but they and Miller agree with me. I've 
a mind to lie abed and just see what happens if 
I don't get up at five-thirty to-morrow and start 
breakfast. But I know that when the moment 
comes, I'll be on deck, and it will be up to Fred 
and me, in addition, to bake the two reflectorfuls 
of bread, cook, wash dishes, — Lord, everything! 
First must come success of the expedition, not my 
ideas, or even justice. The Professor ought now 
to be balancing side-packs against to-morrow, if 
he's really to run the pack train as he says he will, 
for everything is to go on the horses, and Jack is 
coming with us, having decided to without discus- 
sion or advice. Instead, our chief's down there by 
the river, praying over his junk, smiling at screws 
and nickel cases, lifting, stroking his old Abeny 
level. I no longer ask him to show quality; I wish 
he'd show something. He's too silent; hopeful 
without being cheerful ; slow-witted. 

I suppose I am a kicker, but is anyone ever quite 
responsible in this racket? Oh, well, now I've bit- 
ten off such a lot I might as well chew it without 
frothing at the mouth. My back aches from lean- 
ing over these pots. Wonder if I'm roasted in the 
others' diaries. I ought to be. . . . 



of an Explorer 87 

Queer how these slogans of travel vary. To-day 
I muttered over and over: 

Lizzie Borden took an axe, 
Hit her father forty whacks. 
When she saw what she had done. 
She hit her mother forty-one. 



Fred sings : 



Over the slew 
The packtrain flew — 
Over the slew 
The packtrain flew. 



88 The Shameless Diary 

CHAPTER VIII 

DISASTER AND THE STOIC PROFESSOR 

July 15. — We woke gasping for air, like trout 
on a bank, for the rain glazes a tent's pores, and 
makes it air-tight, but never mosquito-proof. At 
three o'clock, I moved under the Professor's silk, 
which was black with the vampires. They'd driven 
him into the open, mummied in blankets, but didn't 
faze me. 

Miller helped at breakfast. Fred and I were 
ages adjusting packs, while the Professor vanished, 
writing to his wife, I guess. I scrawled a few lines 
home, and gave it to the Indian boys, who dropped 
down the river with a little grub and some of our 
superfluities, in the folding kettle and night-lamp 
style, bound for the trading-post on Sushitna River. 
Simon delayed us by the school-girl trick of cutting 
birch bark to write home on. 

We started at ten-thirty, cutting trail west, 
straight up the river-bank, with all the world holds 
for us gathered together at last, and overburden- 
ing the poor, tuckered, fourteen hairless brutes. 
Jack and King chopped trail ahead, the Profes- 
sor leading the train with the big bay branded 



of an Explorer 89 

L. C. groaning under the junk boxes, which are 
a crime to pack on a horse. He has the easiest 
job — no brutes to drive, unmuck and recinch — 
but it looks important. Then come four horses, then 
Simon lazily moving his fat little legs, shouting 
when they're stuck, just in time to drive them 
off the trail; then four more beasts, then Miller, 
tall and silent in khaki; then five, and yours trt'y, 
the peevish rear-guard. 

The going was better, through willow slews 
and spruce flats, but the 'skeet sparks swept our 
necks, the poison of the squashed and dead irritat- 
ing the raw far worse in the wet. The Alaska 
'skeet carries a whetstone, and flies sharpening his 
stinger. . . . 

To-night, the Professor is sitting behind the 
blanket-wall of Jack's fire, asking such questions 
as, "What trees are those across the river?" (Cot- 
tonwoods, of course.) And about distances and 
directions which any child with a map of Alaska 
could answer. He shows his gold front tooth as he 
smiles so slowly. Miller is reading Jack's "Pelham." 
Jack is laying down the law — and all wrong — about 
the difference between blueberries and huckle- 
berries. Simon is putting a new ventilator into the 
tent, making Fred very sore by thus keeping him 
from going to bed. The wind's cool and from the 
North. Well, I must water the beans. . . . 



90 The Shameless Diary 

I scent trouble with the horses. They're playing 
out, and no denying it. We eased the loads of the 
Whiteface and Brown mare while crossing to the 
Skwentna, for one had got very thin, and the other 
lay down in the trail wherever she could. All are 
losing flesh fast, and the hair that the flies dug 
out isn't growing again, and more's falling. They 
stand around near camp, staring dazedly at us 
instead of rustling grass. Worst of all, their legs 
are swollen to double natural size. 

"Just you see," said Jack in the Professor's 
hearing to-day, "another day in these snags and 
mud-holes, and good-bye to this pack train." King 
assented, but not before the Professor. In his hear- 
ing, Fred only shook his head, and said that the 
beasts did look mighty poorly. I know that what 
he thought was worse. He's the greatest diplomat 
I've ever known. It's impossible for him in all this 
stress to offend, even to disagree with any one to 
his face — except Simon, whom he joshes. 

July 1 6. — It's happened — the expected! But pre- 
faced by the Professor's funniest shine yet. 

Fording a tributary to-day. Big Buck, behind 
whose pack he'd jumped, dumped him sprawling 
in midstream. Away floated his mosquito hat 
(which we haven't dared burn) and he after it, 
jounced along on the bottom bowlders. He's sure 



of an Explorer 91 

a peach. *'When do we cross the Keechatna again?" 
he gurgled to King, crawHng ashore. He thought 
that the creek was the main river, and he on a 
scientific expedition to map the wilderness. But I 
suppose it was a great loss, that mosquito hat, and 
he was dazed. So he tied a red bandanna handker- 
chief over his ears, and now looks like a Bashi- 
bazouk. 

We climbed a ridge hinting of foot-hills hid in 
the rain, and nooned in a tundra. Again exotic park 
lands silenced us, luxuriant birches drooped, un- 
canny lush meadows waved deserted and unscarred, 
neck-deep with red-top. We drove on. Tundra sud- 
denly. I was thinking how the swamp smell of Lab- 
rador tea oppressed me — suggesting, somehow, 
dead flesh — when ahead I heard Miller shout and 
shout to the Skinny Bay horse — the Moth-eaten 
Bay, we call him, he has lost so much hair. I saw 
Miller stop, but keep on beating the brute. No use. 
He wouldn't move. I ran up. I jabbed him with my 
stick. It only peeled off chunks of skin and hair. 
He had played out; now he spread his legs, trem- 
bled, lowered his head and blinked stupidly. I got 
Jack and King, and we unpacked him, carried his 
load, and led him to camp by the swamp-side. 

Fred said, *'He wouldn't have played out if I'd 
done with the horses as I wanted." I reminded 
him that on the fourth day out from Tyonek I had 



92 The Shameless Diary 

suggested laying over, and said that I never used 
to travel in the rain. To which he had replied, 
"It won't hurt them to travel every day, even a 
little, so long as you keep going" ; which was char- 
acteristically meaningless. He says now that the 
horses have been worked too hard in a very bad 
country. 

I repeated all this to the Professor, adding that 
a rest of two or three days here was imperative, 
as the Whiteface, Dark Buckskin, and Bridget, the 
white cook-horse (Miller named her) are on the 
verge of collapse. The Professor sighed, ''Urn! — 
de-um-de-ay !" 

King says that if we keep on to-morrow, we*ll 
never make the pass. I asked him what he'd do 
if this were his outfit. He answered: **Rest here 
a few days, and go on slowly, making short hour 
travels, adding a half-hour each day, if the horses 
pick up." I said, "Tell the Professor that. He ex- 
pects you to. That's why you're along." He said, 
"I won't unless he asks me what I think. I'm only 
hired." I said that I'd tell the Professor all this, 
in that case. "Of course, it 'ud be different," added 
King, "if he'd put getting the horses through safe 
entirely in my hands." "I thought he had," said I, 
surprised. "He never said nothin' about it," an- 
swered Fred. "What I said about the horses with 
the Government last year, went. No one ever said. 



of an Explorer 93 

'Isn't the' a better place a little further on?' when 
I said we had to stop to rest the horses, the way 
the Professor did last night." 

The Professor says that we'll pull on to-mor- 
row. I've promised the crowd that we shan't. The 
man hasn't the least idea of a horse's needs, nor 
of Alaskan travel. King is so afraid of giving of- 
fense, he won't express any more opinions at all. 
Yet he's anything but mild when it comes to grub, 
or dulling the axe. . . . 

July 17. — Sixth day of rain — and we haven't 
moved. I asked the Professor to come out and look 
at the horses with me, but he wouldn't. What do 
you think of that? His pack train is going to the 
devil, and he doesn't pay the least attention. Still 
just packs and unpacks his instruments. I wonder 
if he can use a theodolite, after all. 

King and I went out to the beasts, he knocking 
the Professor and the outfit, saying that the horses 
were never fit for Alaska, anyway. "I wouldn't 
have looked twice at that bay mare for this coun- 
try, if I'd had the picking of this train," he said. 
"Yes, sir, we'll be lucky to get to the pass at all." 
But you can't always take men like Fred at their 
forecasts. Facts, which they're always swearing by, 
often turn out to be only what ought-to-be, or they 
fear-may-be. 



94 The Shameless Diary 

The brutes' legs were still very swollen. That's 
the chief trouble, caused by snags on that first wet 
hike up-river. They seemed dazed, too. So are we. 
We're all depressed and grate on one another — 
and perhaps I do nag Simon too much. 

The Professor has just observed that we may 
expect steady rain till we cross the pass. "Yes, 
and steady rain on the other side, too," snapped 
back Jack. He has never a word to say now about 
our troubles, quite dropping out as a factor in the 
outfit. Sometimes he and King have long whis- 
pered talks. Plots of mutiny! 'Sdeath! I had silly 
words with Jack at supper. Proud of his camp craft, 
he advises you how to do everything about it, as 
if he were commanding. I was adjusting the dough- 
full reflector in a hole before the camp-fire, when 

he said, "You'll have a of a time baking bread 

there." "Why, no," said I, "the reflector '11 tip for- 
ward and give the biscuits a better crust." He con- 
tradicted violently, so in my most exasperating 
way I faked a "scientific reason" — something about 
radiating angles of heat — to support me. He as- 
sailed me violently for "all your scientific 

views" (as if / ever had any). The reflector was 
burning my fingers, and I said, to get rid of him, 
"Haven't you any blankets to dry to-night?" 

"That's none of your business!" he 

yelled, before the whole hungry crowd of us. 



of an Explorer 95 

Blanket-drying is a sore point with Jack. He 
and King steal away from camp work these rainy 
nights to their drying-fires, excluding Simon. Once, 
after dish-washing, I built a big one. "What yer 
doing that for ? There's plenty of fire over here for 
you," called Jack. "It's no trouble to build a fire," 
I answered. (It was, though, in the wet, and I 
lied.) "Now, everybody come here to dry his 
blankets," I said. Jack growled something about 
my getting huffy when he'd invited me to his fire. 
I answered sweetly. A gentle answer does turn 
away wrath, except from Jack. He has hardly 
spoken to me since. Silly, aren't we? But he has 
worse tiffs all the time with Miller and Simon, 
which are none of my business. He and the Pro- 
fessor hardly ever speak. . . . 

Clearing mists are lifting threadily over the 
strange green hills northward. The Professor is 
lisping about eating seal and penguin and killing 
pelican in the Antarctic. Miller is crouching low 
out on the tundra, stalking what yells like a raven, 
but he calls a goose. "I'll eat it raw if it ain't a 
duck," said Fred. Simon is everywhere. We bore 
one another, I'm thinking, "Next trip, I'll avoid 
such a human combination as this." Suppose all 
the rest have said that to themselves, too. . . . 

Shall we move to-morrow ? The Professor hasn't 
peeped about it. King still agrees that the only 



96 The Shameless Diary 

thing to do is to rest here a while to let the horses 
pick up, and then drive only two or three hours 
a day. Otherwise, the whole jig is up. I've told 
Miller, who has been ordered to build the fire 
these mornings — the first command yet given — not 
to be too hasty about getting up to-morrow. The 
Professor may find his mind in the night. I'm de- 
termined we shan't travel yet. . . , 

Oh ! the silent reaches of wavy grass in this over- 
nourished region; it's like the parks of carefully 
gardened English manors — but vacant, tragic. The 
immense drooping birches peel off great scrolls of 
bark; huge dead trunks waste away in the rainy 
luxuriance. For years they rot whitely before no 
human eyes. The dead spruce falls and is buried 
in moss, but the birch's ghost is imperishable. . . . 

July 1 8. — Seventh day of rain. We count as 
Noah must have. The Professor said nothing about 
moving, so here we are still. Again he wouldn't 
look at the horses. He doesn't seem to give a darn. 
Their legs are less swollen, and five galloped off 
when they saw me. They haven't done that for 
days, so they're better, except the Moth-eaten Bay, 
who was caught in an alder thicket, and couldn't 
eat till I turned him out. 

Pull out to-morrow? No one knows. The Pro- 
fessor says we'll "try it, and see how it goes." The 



of an Explorer 97 

devil of a principle! We've got to run this team 
on some system, or we're done for. The Professor 
won't tell if we're going to travel two hours or 
twenty. He can't make up his mind. Can't seem to 
grasp the situation. I protested that we shouldn't 
hike for more than three hours, anyway. 'Tf we 
do that, we might as well stay here," said he. 
Logic, eh? 

Simon is ordered to help Miller cook breakfast 
every day, Jack and King to get supper. Jack 
growls at having to eat Simon's cooking; says that 
the kid doesn't wash himself enough. We should 
be more cheerful, but we're not. We have no com- 
mon sense of humor. Jack and the Professor have 
none at all; King's is rooted in queer little repar- 
tees and rhymes, and Simon's in bad puns. I've 
been told mine is pretty badly distorted, too. But 
I'd like to hear a good, hearty laugh, even my 
own. . . . Miller is playing checkers with Si- 
mon on a pencil-marked board on the kerosene 
can. Jack is reading a Government Survey report. 
The Professor, having just broached a scheme to 
cut off distance by finding a pass north of Brooks', 
is fussing, fussing, fussing ! 

July 19. — So we started. Bridget, the cook-horse, 
was down on his knees before we'd gone three 
hundred yards, not mired in the swamp, but played 



98 The Shameless Diary 

out. I shouted, and ran forward, suggesting we 
return. The Professor, who was 'way ahead of 
his train, wouldn't hear of it. He and Simon tried 
to bat the brute up. I wouldn't hit him, nor would 
Jack or Fred. When a horse knees down, he's 
failed, and no amount of banging his skull with 
a club does any good. I hate the cayuse for a mean, 
sly, contrary beast, but I won't stand by and see 
any warm-blooded animal tortured when it's at the 
end of its rope. 

I could hear Simon's monotonous "git up" — he's 
mighty handy at beating horses to show off to the 
Professor — and Miller curse him for hitting the 
poor brute on his head with the butt of a pole. At 
last they seemed to have got him up. 

Twenty yards on, a flooded creek flowed through 
willows. Bridget and three others went down. This 
time, Miller refused to help; and Jack and I held 
off till we saw the beasts would suffer worse in 
the mud. "No one seems inclined to aid," said the 
Professor. We pulled them out without beating, 
and King filled the worst mud-holes with brush, 
complaining the while to me of Simon's and the 
Professor's brutality. Somehow we got across, but 
had more mirings. In three hours the order was 
given to camp. So what I suggested does go. I 
think the Professor really intended to go only three 
hours, but pig-headedly wouldn't say so, not to ap- 



of an Explorer 99 

pear to be taking orders from me. I hope he's 
beginning to realize the nature of a pack horse, 
and what we're up against in Alaska. I'd like to 
call this camp the Camp of the Dawn of Reason. 

We're brighter. Yet hardly a third of the dis- 
tance to McKinley has been covered, and we must 
reach the mountain by August 15th. After that, 
it will be too cold to climb, and grub will run out. 
Sack after sack of flour disappears, one each week, 
and one should last ten days. And the pass found 
by Herron and lost by Brooks is still ahead. . . . 

We've been arguing about the fable of the ant 
and the grasshopper. I took the cicada's side, and 
put it all over the ant as a mean, crusty beast, who 
had lost all capacity for enjoyment through blind, 
hard work, and therefore boiled at pleasure got by 
others. Somehow Jack was peevish, because Simon 
and I said we thought it a joke to call the white 
gelding ''Bridget," and "she." Now he is reading 
Tom Sawyer, and the Professor the Fortnightly 
Review — for the first time in his life, I guess. 

So at last it has cleared in the windless, nerve- 
less, Alaskan way. Clouds form here without mo- 
tion in the glittery white sky; it rains a month; 
suddenly, still without wind or mist movement — 
it magically clears. , nr p 



100 The Shameless Diary 



CHAPTER IX 



I BREAK LOOSE TWICE 



July 20. — My first brush with the Proiessor. I 
was tactless and hasty. Sorry. 

We started, with no inkhng of how long the 
skinny beasts must plug on. Through ghastly 
birches, grass which met over the tops of the packs, 
willow swamps, at last we met a box canyon of the 
foot-hills in three hours. It was pitiful, driving the 
beasts sheer down through the brush. Poor Miller 
gave up beating Bridget, I pelting mud from above. 
Somehow we did get him across the creek at the 
bottom. Then he spread his legs — played out again. 

I was angry, ran ahead, and seeing the Profes- 
sor, burst out about his having "sense knocked into 
him some time," knowing "nothing about horses, 
and not wanting to know." The torrent came too 
easily. "Dunn, it doesn't do any good to talk like 
that," he said quietly. 

I went back with Simon, and we did bat Bridget 
along. Simon likes beating horses — when the Pro- 
fessor's around — but he left Miller and me to haul 
the beast up the opposite scarp of the canyon, on 



of an Explorer 101 

which Bridget rolled into a mud-hole. Miller and 
I unpacked him, back-packed his load to the top, 
and dragged him up to the Professor. "I'm sorry 
if I put my feelings too strongly sometimes," I 
said to him. He only answered, ''Dunn, you talk 
too much and too loud all the time." Now, on the 
way back to Bridget, I had cursed the Professor's 
leadership to Simon, who probably told him, or he 
had overheard — hence the "loud." Next, the Light 
Buckskin rolled off his pack, and we camped. Just 
three hours' travel again. 

Yet, I'm happy to-night — if that can interest any 
one but the carelessly absent gnats. A strong wind 
blows. Over our swamp, sharp snow peaks, blue 
with the vague, questioning azure of the North, 
fuse whited spires into a burnished heaven. Even- 
ing casts queer shadows from the alder-clumps, 
into the rank grass and snow patches of our hill- 
sides. . . . 

Simon has actually volunteered to wash the 
dishes. Jack's punching holes in a tin plate to sift 
the lumpy, mildewed flour; some of its yellow and 
green chunks are big as half-a-dollar. Fm drying 
grub. 

At last! I've just asked the Professor to take us 
more into his confidence, and he announces before- 
hand — think of that! — that we'll only travel three 
hours a day till the horses are better. Victory ! 



102 The Shameless Diary 

July 21. — We hit down good trailing through 
alder to the dozen silty channels of the Keechatna. 
All the beasts are better. The Brown mare didn't 
lie dow^n once. I drive the train's rear still, with 
the six worst invalids to bat on ; Roan, Whiteface, 
Bridget, Moth-eaten Bay, Big Buck. Fred says 
they've had "distemper," which means any old dis- 
ease; the Professor that they were poisoned by 
the yellow-bellied flies, since they played out so 
suddenly. I remember that at Tyonek Light Buck 
and Little Gray had foul breath and ran at their 
noses; so others did at the Skwentna. The Moth- 
eaten and Dark Buck still have hardly a hair on 
their bodies, and couldn't live a minute among 
flies. Now the sickest are the Brown B horse and 
P. R. Sorrel, who carries and is always shipping 
that box of Simon's with his botany presses in — 
which Jack and I are planning to *'lose" — so you 
can't blame the P. R. Light Buck and Little Gray 
haven't shown a sign of failing, so may not they all 
have only been suffering in getting acclimated, 
these two recovering from their dose first? 

King, though he's willing to say "Yes" to any 
one's suggestion, except Simon's, to whom on 
principle he pays not the least attention, agrees that 
the train is saved. . . . 

Nine o'clock, and the sun is poised magically 
over translucent mountains in the west. Miller is 



of an Explorer 103 

using them in queer calculations with guess-work 
angles and his watch. The Professor is loafing, of 
course. He wears the cut-off tops of his socks for 
wristers to keep the 'skeets out, and instead of the 
Bashi-bazouk handkerchief, a golf cap, so he looks 
like a yellow-haired Bluebeard. 

July 22. — In four hours we have made ten miles, 
hitting the tangled river channels, which we ''took 
across," as King says, fording incessantly from 
bar to bar. Simon, who seems to care for nothing 
but his own comfort, hates to wet his feet. At one 
fording, he jumped behind one of his bunch's pack, 
dashed among the rest, scattering them till they 
were swimming about and wetting the grub. The 
horses made back to shore, and from the other side 
he refused to recross and corral them, which Miller 
and I had to do. At the next channel, he cut into the 
middle of my bunch on a narrow spit, and drove 
the P. R. back a quarter mile. He fetched her, and 
caught us at the next ford. All his beasts had 
plunged in ahead, so he sprang to ride one of n^ine, 
but I batted them all on furiously, and though I 
slumped in to my arm-pits, Simon had to wade. 
We others, except the Professor, who has only 
L. C. to manage, always wade. It's the only way 
to safeguard dry crossings for the grub. Every 
one is sore on Simon for these tricks, especially 



104 The Shameless Diary 

Fred and Jack, for besides wetting the grub, he 
soaks their favorite blankets. He hasn't yet any 
control over a horse, nor seems to want it. . . . 

Once to-day I had to laugh. The Professor care- 
fully tied his money belt around his neck, dabbed at 
a channel, like a bear after salmon, with the old Si- 
wash canoe paddle he found and carries — to find 
the water two feet deep! 

Simon is more and more of a mark. No atten- 
tion is paid to his comments. Fred reverses his 
every suggestion. This morning we wrapped the 
axe up in his hat, and he was nearly sunstruck. 
When he found the cap to-night, in camp, he sim- 
ply said that we had played a *'low trick" on him, 
and began to whine about having a headache. I 
hate meek people. 

At last the box of hard-tack *'for use on the 
mountain" — thus the cayuse revenges himself for 
mean packing — is bunged and wet, and we are eat- 
ing the crackers, with some of the Professor's 
peanut brittle. I have stewed a mess of the green 
currants which grow everywhere, and like green 
apples, make better sauce than when ripe. Jack 
has just made a bull, getting very sore when every 
one laughed. "There's lots of trout in these muddy 
rivers," said he, *'when they're clear." King and 
the Professor are filling empty flour sacks with dry 
grass, because those hefty junk boxes are chafing 



of an Explorer 105 

L. C. The beasts seem hairier and almost well; 
anyhow, they've just gayly tromped over my dry- 
ing blankets. Simon is mending his pants, as he does 
every minute of every evening. Miller has just 
been imitating his shuffling walk, which is like the 
man's where I pawned my gold sleeve links in Se- 
attle. He has spread his botanical paper in the sun. 
Can't we roll on it somehow? 

July 2^. — Simon keeps up his fording stunts. 
Though the days are all too alike, the dazing ten- 
sion of travel never relaxes ; herding horses one by 
one over miles of muck; boiling beans, mixing 
bread, burning callous fingers on the hot, collaps- 
ing reflector: never an hour to rest, to dry off 
from the tortures of rheumatism, mend tattered 
boots and clothes, forget the roar of icy water about 
your waist, the crazing cloud of 'skeets. 

Ahead, indecently whiskered, the slightly knock- 
kneed Professor, in gray cap, gold-tooth, and go- 
loshes, red handkerchief and paddle — like the wand 
of a sour-dough fairy — yanks at unwilling L. C. 
Next, squirrel-faced Simon potters on, also with 
red handkerchief, and a little black velvet cap, that 
with his new, fuzzy black whiskers, makes him a 
sure-enough Yiddisher. Feebly he yells, *'Git up! 
Git on there!" letting his four beasts lag 'way be- 
hind, jump from the trail into each mud-hole, scat- 



106 The Shameless Diary 

ter on the wooded bars, delay us. Still slim Miller, 
in broad-brimmed hat and brown canvas, yells at 
his beasts like an ox-driver, but lets me, the growler 
— not saying much, for responsibility's all up to 
the Professor now — know with my invalid pets 
when the trail's blocked, which Simon never does. 
Ahead of all. Jack and Fred still chop, curse, and 
rubber-neck through the willows, slump into the 
slews. So it is, up and down terrace, through swamp, 
across stony channel. 

The valley is bending northward, narrowing 
'twixt the green foot-hills paneled with snow. 
We're camped by the beaver swamp of a clear 
tributary. Miller and I started to fish. I got one 
yellow-belly fly for bait off Bridget, one off White- 
face, and a big grayling ate them at the first cast 
of the willow pole. Bacon drew only shy nibbles. 
The creek got too bushy, so I got busy with the 
geological hammer and a slate out-crop — the first 
rock we've seen since the Skwentna. I climbed the 
scarp, plunged into the creek's canyon, where a 
waterfall I saw would keep a summer hotel 
crowded at home ; but nary a fossil. Miller had 
played Jonah, too, but was back at camp, stewing 
green currants. I've made that mess an institution. 
It saves our dried fruit, and the Professor says it's 
better for insides. Besides, it uses up lots of sugar, 
which I don't care for, and I shall take a sadistic 



of an Explorer 107 

delight in seeing our sugar hogs — we won't 
mention any names — suffer from its lack some 
day. . . . 

Yonder is a grassy hill arranged with drooping 
birches. I bet you that a latticed summer house 
is hid somewhere on top ; and that beyond, nestling 
in a valley, where men are making hay, dozes an 
ancient hamlet with white-steepled church. Do you 
wonder vacant Alaska drives some men mad ? 

July 24. — Jack is sick with a pain in his chest. 
The Professor says that it's neuralgia, and gives 
him white tablets. King says that Jack nearly caved 
in yesterday, and threatened to *'lay down" on the 
trail, letting us go on without knowing. Though ill 
several days, he has confided in no one but King 
up to to-day, when, after crossing a large clear 
stream coming in from the north, he was weak 
enough to fall twice and be carried down with the 
current. 

To-day the Professor had his first practical idea : 
that we'd make better time always traveling the 
mile-wide river-bed, endlessly fording the twisty 
channels which get narrower and swifter; which 
we've done. And though King wanted to keep to 
the hills, because Brooks had hugged them, and 
swore that the glacial wash skinned hoofs, we've 
come near sixteen miles to camp by this slew. 



108 The Shameless Diary 

This morning we opened the lone can of glucose 
syrup, long yearned for by Simon. "G , its am- 
brosia!" gasped he at breakfast, wallowing with 
it on his pancake. Carefully he hid the can in the 
empty coffee-bag on Bridget's right-side alforgus. 
Now, I hate sweet-tooth gluttony on the trail, so 
when we unpacked Bridget to-night — no syrup can. 
Yes, that right pack had slipped coming down the 
scarp to camp; Miller and I had noticed it; even 
the coffee-bag hanging out! Nobly Simon quelled 
his tears, and all but started can-hunting on the 
back-trail. We got him to spoil his ambrosial appe- 
tite by eating a whole flap-jack under plebeian 
sugar, before fondly we produced the syrup from 
the grass where Fred had slung it. Isn't it a shame 
to horse the boy so? This is Alaskan humor, in a 
crowd like this. 

The Professor rears his conical tent on the gravel 
bar, to dodge the 'skeets, he says, though I notice 
he's built a baby smudge, which he reaches in a 
rubber-shoe ferry. Miller's picking currants; I've 
shaved, and am mending my pants and drawers 
with dunnage-bag canvas, where the whole shebang 
had worn through to the skin kneeling before cook- 
pots. I have to do nearly as much cooking as ever. 
Simon never gets up in time to help mornings, but 
crawls out of his blankets just before Miller hol- 
lers, ''Brek-faast !" and without washing, sneaks 



of an Explorer 109 

the first pancake off the pile. Just now, King and 
I are enlarging on how thick the 'skeets are in the 
tent — we've not been pestered with one for two 
nights — just to keep the kid from sleeping there. 
So, as he did last night, he's rigging a wicker hood 
over his bed with willows — near the grub as usual, 
I observe. 

Jack sleeps. I wonder what would be done if 
any one were really laid up? The Professor hasn't 
a shadow of a notion, I'm sure. All day I had a 
bad pain over my appendix, so he said. It doesn't 
worry me. How could it? I can't imagine a man 
stranded on a rock in mid-ocean without grub or 
water worrying: can you? 

July 25. — Simon caught it to-day, and I'm 
ashamed again. Stubborn and vital he is, though 
maddeningly lazy, and slow as old women ; yet com- 
pared to what might have been, and generally is, 
with such as we in Alaska, our hopeless and un- 
ending life is Arcadian. . . . 

He kept up his tactics, leaping behind a packed 
horse at each ford, dashing across and scattering 
the train to swim in circles out of depth, soaking 
the precious grub. We swam a-thousand-and-one 
channels, pounded a-thousand-and-one gravel bars. 
Miller and I, getting angrier and angrier, stoned 
him through swift water, so he thumbed his nose 



110 The Shameless Diary 

at us. What do you think of a man who'll let an 
expedition go to keep his feet dry and then glory 
in it? 

At last I got him. The icy water, hurtling bowl- 
ders along bottom, roared under our armpits; we 
made a blind island, and drove the beasts right 
back again. Simon mounted the Roan, as I chased, 
beating the horse with a stick. The kid lost his 
temper, and lunged at me in midstream, saying 
he'd "do" me if I hit his horse again. I did, of 
course. When we landed, he made a dive for me. 
We clinched, and in ten seconds he was lying on 
his face, chewing silt and gravel, making sup- 
pressed, back-handed lunges. His spectacles and 
hat were lost. I didn't want to hurt him, so he began 
taking it out of me in talk. The worst he called 
me was a cad and a bully. He was foaming at the 
mouth and weepy, making foxy struggles to get 
up if I relaxed, till I landed him in six inches of 
slough water, and said he could freeze there or 
promise not to ride channels. Miller added insult 
by coming along laughing and taking a photograph 
of us — as Simon promised. "You act as if you ran 
this whole outfit," he whimpered. "Whatever you 
do is right, but if any one else makes a break, you 
come down hard on them." I grieve that can't be 
denied. 

Ahead, the Professor had stopped the train, and 



of an Explorer 111 

asked Miller what the trouble was. "Oh, only Dunn 
and Simon," he answered, "settling a small diffi- 
culty." The Professor said nothing, and won't. 
Soon, every one was being carried off his feet in 
the next channel, soaked and pounded on the white 
granite bowlders. Miller went down with a look 
on his face as if he saw the Angel Gabriel, and the 
Professor flopped about with his paddle like a giant 
Dungeness crab. Twice I slipped into holes over 
my head, and though never carried away, lost my 
hat, as my horse bunch hit back for shore. And 
Simon, deprived of pack horses, was all but shipped 
to Cook Inlet! I pulled him out with a pole. Talk 
about coals of fire ! 

Here in camp, we've been holding a post-mortem 
of the day. Fred baited Simon unmercifully, and 
Jack observed that he'd seen the fifth wheel wash- 
ing gravel out of his hair. Simon was burning in 
a fry-pan his indigestible biscuits insides — the old 
trick — when King drawled, "What yer carryin' 
around that smudge with yer for?" Even the Pro- 
fessor added his mite by issuing the fiat that no 
more pancakes, on which Simon lives, are to be 
cooked, because they use too much sugar. Those 
two seem tuckered out, and now are asleep in the 
sun with their mouths open; not beautiful sights, 
with Alaskan crops of whiskers. I've said good-bye 
to my toes. For days they've been sticking through 



112 The Shameless Diary 

my boots, so I've capped them with leather from 
one of the two Abercrombie saddles, and Belgian 
nails. Our legs are badly chafed. We smear them 
with vaseline. Jack is riveting a flour sack to his 
overalls. Miller can't find any currants. . . . 

Now we are discussing how Herron and Brooks 
crossed the mountains. Brooks missed Herron's 
way — Simpson Pass — and found another, more cir- 
cuitous, leading him first back to Skwentna head- 
waters. King remembers little about it all. We're 
hardly a day's travel now from whatever glaciers 
the Keechatna heads in. *'We must get to work 
on a reconnoissance of Simpson's Pass to-morrow," 
says the Professor, pompously. Everything we 
guess and prophesy about it would drive you mad. 
Only higher and sharper tower these sudden moun- 
tains, the To-toy-lon sub-range. Spruces cling only 
down along the river, which is a single, mad, choco- 
late thread. To-day we passed the first bunches of 
glaciers hid in jagged, slaty peaks, direfully folded 
and faulted, pitching with snowfields and greenery 
strewn on their desert tali, sheer from the roar 
below here. Old nature, grand style, is getting busy. 



of an Explorer 113 

CHAPTER X 

PLEURISY AND THE PASS 

July 26. — Rain! We're shivering in the ever- 
wet blankets, at the last rotting cottonwoods — tree 
line. You could cut the tobaccoey air in the tent, 
made by King's and my pipe-tobacco-and-botany- 
paper cigarettes. Thus we pipe on, and rag-chew, 
about what Brooks did, Herron did, and we'll do. 

The country doesn't at all gee with Herron's 
map, and Brooks has discreetly left a blank where 
he got lost. From here, three valleys open into the 
peaks and snowy haze veiling Simpson Pass. The 
northernmost ends with the main source of 
the Keechatna, Herron's ^'Caldwell Glacier," for 
through the scud we can see a clear green river, 
like a pillar of malachite, streaking its smooth and 
ashen desolation. The central valley is narrow and 
unglaciated; the southern, which Brooks followed 
and went wrong in, getting lost for five days, is 
broad and has a siltless stream. If it leads to Simp- 
son Pass, Herron's "Fleischmann Glacier" (he 
must have come from Ohio, scattering all these 
Buckeye politicians' names about) whose moraine 
he crossed, should lie in it ; but glaciers should have 



114 The Shameless Diary 

silty streams. Fred tells how Brooks' topographer 
lost his temper with Herron's map, tore it up, and 
turned south out of this southern valley. It does 
seem the most logical to explore; yet the central 
valley, since we have found axe marks leading into 
it, ought to be tested, too. 

Jack has just been very funny. Some one took 
his blankets left drying by the fire, and he let out 
ten yards of curses, shouting that if he found the 
man he'd 'lick him, if I have to take a club to 
him." Came Miller's voice from the silk cone, *1 
got three blankets from under the tree." Looks to 
me as if the Professor'd swiped them and forced 
Miller into the breach. He was in the tent, too. No 
one fought. 

Later. — The Professor and I have climbed the 
ridge between the two iceless valleys. He wouldn't 
go far, sauntering to pick blueberries, uming and 
ahing, clearing his throat, (Jack says that he must 
have some "fashionable" disease in it) losing the 
trail, choosing the worst places through the alders, 
and showing no sense of locality. He wasn't so hot 
to find that short cut north of Herron's Pass he 
was talking of when the beasts played out. He 
seemed even content to follow Brooks. 

Once, squatting in the desolate dripping furze, 
high in the unearthly storm, he said : "I've spoken 
to Jack once or twice about these outbursts of his. 



of an Explorer 115 

Have you seen how queer his eyes are lately? 
They're like a man's who is going insane." I have 
noticed the hollow pallor of his cheeks, but they 
never hinted madness to me. Jack hasn't been able 
to lift a flour sack for days. No one dares now 
even comment on his words or actions, for he 
explodes at the simplest remark. "The fact is," 
ended the Professor, "I've decided that Jack has 
pleurisy, anyway, and not neuralgia." . . . 

The hollow river thunders. Fitful light thrills the 
valley into vast mosaics of green and gold. Never 
have I seen such jagged mountains, sheer slopes 
so blasted with broken black rock. 

July 27. — Jack lay moaning by me all night, his 
hands pressed tight to his chest. 

I took Miller and a baking-powder tin of burned 
beans, unsalted (the horses ripped open the salt 
sack this morning, and almost cleaned it up) to 
search the middle gorge. Just as we separated from 
the pack train, which went south through the broad 
valley, I saw Jack staggering up behind, his fists 
on his chest, gasping with pain. I ran ahead, and 
shouted to the Professor to stop and see Jack. "Yes, 
we'll let him have a tent alone, to-night," was all 
he said, never budging from L. C. 

Miller and I struck off west. Far below in these 
hateful peaks where we struggled, up, up, along 



116 The Shameless Diary 

sliding talus, across snow-bridges, roared a feath- 
ery stream in a Titanic crack. Clouds rolled up from 
the coast, lit by strange flashes of sunlight, now 
dissolving, now creating more dizzy rock slopes, 
fingered with the startling green of alders, or 
blighted by mournful ice pushing down atrophied 
flanks from the endless storm. . . . Four miles, 
and we crossed a bigger snow-bridge. We divided 
the beans and our three biscuits, and shivered on 
water-swept talus among waxy alpine flowers at 
the range's heart. The gorge was blind; at least 
you'd have had to "lift yourself with toes and fin- 
gers" to reach the Kuskokwim valley, now our 
goal — as Herron writes that his Indians told him 
before deserting. We retraced our steps, and took 
up the whole day's journey of the pack-train. At 
last we sighted Big Buck nosing at the moss in a 
bend of the big south valley; then the Professor's 
cone house, and Simon alone, nursing a wet willow 
fire. Again the Moth-eaten Bay had played out ! 

Hungry as we were, Simon, when he saw us 
coming, though he had eaten only an hour back, 
seized the frying-pan and covered the only hot 
place in the tiny blaze to make himself pancakes. 
Gosh! Alcohol, sacred for use on the mountain, 
had to be used to light it, after even Jack, said 
the kid, had given up hope for a fire. 

Jack was asleep. King and the Professor off 



of an Explorer 117 

looking for Herron's Fleischmann Glacier. Simon, 
for no particular reason, began firing his Colt 
smokeless to bring them back. Jack woke and 
cursed us all till the scouts returned, glum and 
shaking their heads. Yes, they'd seen Fleischmann, 
but no Pass : the valley ended blind. Should we 
stay here to reconnoitre to-morrow, or head south- 
east through Brook's side valley, which we sup- 
posed was the one opening opposite camp — King 
didn't remember — at right angles to our gorge? I 
didn't believe that Herron went through here 
drunk, as you might have thought to hear some of 
us talk. I left camp, saying nothing. In half a mile, 
Fleischmann Glacier pushed its flat blueness out 
upon huge slate moraines. I waded its stream, silt- 
less by some miracle, and mounted the bowlder- 
strewn esker. It appeared to wall a niche in the 
blind range. I rose, still keeping southwest; the 
walls seemed to slip apart; my heart was burning; 
a steeper, darker, valley opened — and, quite against 
all physiographic law, turned narrowly downward, 
bent further west among sharper, darker moun- 
tains truncated by cloud. The Pass! The Kusko- 
kwim valley, illimitable, untrodden, unto the tun- 
dras of Behring Sea. 

I ran down to slosh through its head-waters. 
Yellow and white Arctic poppies bloomed on the 
mossy shale. It was twilight. Where were the griz- 



118 The Shameless Diary 

zlies that Herron wrote had chased him here? I 
had no gun. I was ready for them. How chary is 
life of such triumphs as this ; what wonder men go 
to the devil, seeking in civilization to counterfeit 
such intoxication! But what had this not cost? In 
the easy order of the world, helpless man was meant 
for evil. ... 

We're shivering in the tent. Jack is in with us, 
groaning. Some one said in Valdez, I remember, 
that he looked like the only one of us who could 
stand the racket on such a trip as this. Oh, very 
well. Talk of godforsaken camps! The cheese- 
cloth, dog-house door is open; only two 'skeets 
are clinging to the roof, too numb and discouraged, 
it's remarked, to do business. Across this old gla- 
cial valley, the haunting talus still sweeps into 
cloud. Two fuzzy bunches of alders, insanely green, 
lie between the dug-like black fans at their base, 
by the stream's sudden canyon. Below, there's a 
meadow — surely blue- with wild forget-me-nots — 
where gulls from the sea are hovering. Over there 
a man would seem a fly, yet you'd think that from 
here you could hear him whistle, but for the wind 
that's howling — so does the Alaskan scale of things 
upset all time and space. Furiously that wind bellies 
the tent. Like the Biblican house, I hope we've got 
rocks under. 

We're to have one and a half biscuits apiece, 



of an Explorer 119 

already cooked, for breakfast, as a fire with the 
soaked green willows is impossible any more. 
Simon, who cooked them in the frying-pan, has 
burned all. You see^, he likes them burnt. 

July 28. — Alcohol lit the willows for breakfast 
tea, after Miller had tried two hours without it. 
When sure he wasn't joshing that they burned, 
we shivered out of the tent; ate, horse-hunted, 
packed, and headed for the Pass. 

Jack started, walking ahead alone, groaning as 
he leaned on a pole. The Professor cavorted about, 
photographing us on a snow-bridge over the gla- 
cier stream. Down, down the talus of the Pass we 
slabbed. The horses balked at mashing hoofs to a 
jelly, so we herded them on the stampede, clatter- 
tering all over the two thousand feet slope of 
chipped rock. Simon with his .22 popped a dozen 
times at a ptarmigan ten feet away, so Miller 
jumped in and wrung the bird's neck. At last the 
valley bent, and spruce trees — forgotten things — 
climbed from the coveted valley of Tateno River. 
Everyone was weary. 

Six o'clock, and no camp ; impenetrable willows, 
cross-canyons, packs slipping; and repacking in im- 
possible, boiling river places was a rest. Seven 
o'clock — lucky the Moth-eaten Bay had no pack at 
all. Bridget slipped the reflector off his pack, and 



120 The Shameless Diary 

went bucking up a mountain with Light Buck. 
Even Fred, as we repacked, talked of the Profes- 
sor's getting sense knocked into him some time 
about horses ; and across the canyon, small as an ant, 
I could see how furious was Jack by his jerky mo- 
tions. And Miller was sullen. 

The immense bed and tiny stream of the Tateno 
met us at dusk; and camp is among strange red- 
berried bushes and moss powdered whitely with 
silt, far from the currants, rank grass banks and 
lush flowers of the rainier coast country. A new 
'flora, new climate — now for new life ! 

"Why stop?" said I in my nastiest way, but 
thinking of the poor brutes. '1 thought you were 
going to make the Kuskokwim to-night, Profes- 
sor." And Jack, apparently mistaking such a josh 
for a real idea of the Professor's, went off at half- 
cock, as usual. 

At last we've crossed the great Alaskan Range. 
When we have unwound from its heart, the last 
stretch to McKinley will be ahead. We follow down 
this tributary; then down the south fork of the 
Kuskokwim till it emerges from the mountains; 
then we turn northeast along their face, through 
the foot-hill country. 

July 29. — The first day we rest, and are not 
forced to. 



of an Explorer 121 

At breakfast we made out four sheep crawling 
like legged snow-balls over the mountain back of 
camp. Off starts Fred with the Professor's .44. At 
noon, while ripping off the outer sacks from the 
flour, and laying all the grub in the sun — though 
it rains now and then — we hear shots, and count 
thirteen snowballs on the mountain skedaddling 
over a ridge, some down into a canyon, some up, 
some straight along; at last appears Fred wearily 
and doll-like up there, lucklessly following after. 
Down another gorge he sneaks ; up merrily dash the 
four sheep on its far side. Shots sound ; not a mov- 
ing speck yonder. Appears Fred at last in camp, 
cursing the Professor's gun as "worn out" and 
"leaded." We try target practice, and it won't hit 
within two feet of the stump. So we called beans 
mutton, and ate glumly, as a snow-squall sugared 
the red peaks all about, and the aneroid marked us 
2590 feet up, the thermometer 51°. Summer's 
scarce this year. 

Jack seems better, but only Fred dares ask after 
his health. He moves about glumly, eating little. 
"I'm afraid we must leave him behind — with grub, 
of course — till we return," the Professor has just 
said to me. "It appears a cruel thing to do, but 
what else is there? Jack appears to be played out. 
He hasn't any more heart." It does seem so. But 
shall we return this way? 



122 The Shameless Diary 

July 30. — Again we ford river channels, travel- 
ing south down the Tateno River to within three 
miles (we guess) of the Kuskokwim; shallow 
channels, so we let Simon, who is now trained 
properly, shin behind the Light Gray and save his 
feet. King seizes Big Buck, Miller the Brown B 
horse, Jack the Roan, I Whiteface. Each in turn 
we undo our beast's tie-rope, stone our charges 
through the treacherous current, follow wavering 
with the bowlders dragged along bottom. The Pro- 
fessor is the most comical spectacle ever, shinning 
with much leg motion behind his junk on L. C, 
leaning forward as if sick, his knees stuck in, his 
rubber feet out. He rides if the water's over his 
boot-soles. He can't decide where to ford, but leads 
L. C. in circles about each bar, till I shout nastily 
from behind, "Well! Well! Which way? Which 
way?" 

Here in camp in rain, moss, and forest, for tundra 
has spread everywhere, and there's almost no 
grass, he has again begun harping to me about 
Jack. "I think Jack had better go back," he said. 
"He won't get any better wading all these rivers, 
and even if he does, he won't be of any use to us 
on the mountain. If he rests here a day or two, 
he'll feel apparently all well — well enough to cross 
the Pass and raft down the Keechatna. The pains 
in his chest will stop. He hasn't anything very 



of an Explorer 123 

dangerous; it's not septic pleurisy — " he went on 
in his concihatory, querulous voice, accenting the 
last word in each phrase. The Professor is a sort 
of mild and gentle Teutonic Cedric or Ethelbert, 
long-haired and fair. After all, I can't be out of 
sympathy with him. But I suspected he simply 
wanted to get rid of Jack, as his usefulness as a 
horse-rustler is about over, and we haven't any too 
much grub. He even announced that Jack was 
going back. The crowd heard it in silence. 

I wish I knew more about pleurisy. The risk 
of sending any sick man across that dismal Pass 
alone, to swim and reswim that mad Keechatna, 
and raft two hundred miles, seems revolting and 
inhuman. 

But here in the tent. Jack has brightened up at 
the prospect, and seems almost his old self again. 
He's pointing out childishly, and laughing in a 
queer way at one splash of mud on the wall that 
looks like a pig, one like an Uncle Sam. I've rustled 
spruce boughs for his bed, and told him that what- 
ever he does must be of his own accord. He began 
magnifying the difficulties of a return in his child- 
ish way. "How does the Professor figure I'll take 
a back pack up that Pass with these pains? That's 
all I don't like — that Pass. He oughter told me I 
had the pleurisy before we crossed it. Won't I get 
worse wading those streams? And how can he 



124 The Shameless Diary 

spare enough rope for a raft? Suppose I lose one? 
The only man I knew had these pains spit blood 
and died on Copper River in '98," etc. He sug- 
gested he take the Moth-eaten Bay, who can only 
pack forty pounds, but would carry his blankets 
and clothes, take him across streams till water is 
deep enough to raft in, and his saddle would supply 
rope for the logs. 

Later. — I put that very strongly to the Profes- 
sor. He won't see it, cruelly, I thought, and said 
we'd need the Moth-eaten Bay to trade off packs 
in resting the other horses. But he can't ever carry 
enough for that, and as the grub goes, we need 
fewer horses, and this one is almost sure to starve 
going down the Kuskokwim, where King says 
there's no grass at all. "Well, I'll see what King 
thinks," the Professor evaded at last. I've tipped 
off Fred to kick at Jack's going back without the 
horse. I shall. 

July 31. — First, the impossible happened. The 
Professor yawned out of bed before breakfast, and 
laid aside for Jack's return the small skillet, a can 
of milk, and a tin cup. 

Then Fred and I began a five-mile horse-hunt. 
Somewhere on the weary tundra we met Miller, 
who said, "Jack is better, and coming with us to- 
day." "Seems to me," drawled Fred, "Jack takes on 



of an Explorer 125 

a little more about being sick than he ought. You 
never can tell from a man's looks how he'll stay it 
out up in this country." 

In hours, we found Bridget and the Light Gray 
hiding on a remote summit ; we packed ; floundered 
out upon the measureless silt flats of the Kusko- 
kwim, south fork, flowing due west; and followed 
its current. It was too deep to ford anywhere, so 
we labored seven miles down the north bank, wad- 
ing slews in its flooded desert bed. 

Camp is on a mossy spruce-flat. Rabbits are so 
thick they almost trip you up. Miller has shot a 
mess with his revolver. 

The horses are vainly nosing about for swamp 
grass in dry tundra-puddles between us and a 
theatric mountain. So light is the snowfall, the 
ground here is always frozen, and dry sphagnum 
replaces lush grass. Crossing to here from the 
Keechatna is like going suddenly from England 
to Arizona. Southward, great canyons cut away 
toward the mist-ringed ice of regions utterly un- 
known; up-river drowse black, glacier-mantled 
peaks. Overhead spring the Terra Cotta Moun- 
tains (discreetly named so by Herron), clear-cut 
and youthful. The gray river-channels roar like 
falling rain in the dry sunlight, through dazzling 
silt and saffron willow flat. Yonder, a slow-eating 
fire blights the forest with insane designs. Its 



126 The Shameless Diary 

smoky spires meet undulating clouds above, sus- 
pended there like sea-grass in bright water. . . . 

Jack seems better adjusted to this queer crowd; 
and better physically, but still discouraged. For 
some time he's dropped his old sour-dough scorn 
of our green ways. It's a good beginning, and must 
keep up if he travels on. But a trip for its own 
sake is never enough for him, who has never 
worked for anything but daily wages. I wonder 
why not? Possibly some subjective reason that I 
can't be bothered with these days. He seems to 
have deceived himself about the rewards of this 
exploration ; and self-deceivers tire me ; must not 
be taken too much to heart. Irishmen, anyway, can 
stir up amazing sympathy about nothing, and in 
the end fizzle out. 

Simon, even as he complains of indigestion, eats 
his third cup of apricots, resugaring them which 
are already sugared in cooking. The Professor is 
a-sweetening up, too. Sometimes I think that 
they're peas from the same pod. 

August I. — After the magnificent horse-hunt — 
the Dunnage Bay found last under the very bench 
where the Professor was junking — Jack began con- 
fabbing, discussing, as most persons consider in 
silence, the pros and cons as to life, death, and his 
precious health, in going back across the Pass, or 



of an Explorer 127 

keeping on. We gathered about him and the Pro- 
fessor. I thought his talk a bit hypochondriacal; it 
bored me; that Jack might keep on only to escape 
the name of quitter. I resolved not to take his ail- 
ments too seriously, and went twice to the river 
for a drink, as he spun on. 

"Here's another thing," he would keep begin- 
ning, "now I figure it this way," as to pains in your 
kidneys, snow, wading streams, and raft rope. 

I suggested that the crowd vote whether he went 
on or back, to show our preferences, not to bind 
him. All said they wanted him to stay with us, 
though the Professor's arguments were for a re- 
turn. He seemed anxious to hustle Jack off, while 
pretending great solicitude. Miller refused to vote, 
mistaking opinions for advice ; saying, "It's a ques- 
tion Jack ought to settle for himself." Fred con- 
ditioned his vote by saying that Jack must never be 
left alone — while we're on the mountain, for in- 
stance — if he kept on. The Professor consented to 
let him have the Moth-eaten Bay, if he would re- 
turn. Lucky for him he changed his mind; Fred 
and I were ready with a piece of ours if he hadn't, 
knowing how well life and death were at stake. 

So, Jack decided to go back, after keeping us 
two hours, telling how he didn't want to delay us. 
Simon tried to skimp him on the sugar of his ten 
day's ration, and I delighted in making the kid 



128 The Shameless Diary 

double the amount. He wanted Jack to sign a state- 
ment that he'd left us voluntarily, which the Pro- 
fessor and I tabooed. That must be an Arctic 
wrinkle. Beside the skillet and the milk can, he 
took our spare axe, a baking-powder tin, and a 
cup. The adieux, as he packed the horse, were 
conventional. 

And we have traveled twelve miles to this willow 
flat. A hot sirocco roars down the reddish moun- 
tains, swaying our drift-wood fire to singe your hair 
ten feet away, and chokes the beans with floury 
silt. In a gulch we passed the skeleton of Brooks' 
first played-out horse, the head lugged fifty yards 
away by bears; and right there the P. R. floun- 
dered feet-up, and was chopped out. 

To-day's verse was original, suggested by Si- 
mon's repeating the Willie-and-the-Poisoned-Tea 
rhyme; and by Jack's departing: 

Three argonauts went North for gold, 
Starvation came; Jim died of cold. 
Said Jack to Bob in merriment, 
"Let's eat, and have more room in the tent." 

No one seems to miss Jack much. His name 
hasn't been mentioned. That rabbit stew was great. 



of an Explorer 129 

CHAPTER XI 

RED FLESH FOR KINGS OF FRANCE 

August 2. — We have crossed the entire range. 

On to-day's "march," as the Professor always 
says, as if we had a brass band and a drum major, 
we left the Kuskokwim, for the mountains sud- 
denly ended. We turned northeast to travel the last 
hundred and fifty miles to McKinley, in airline 
along the face of the Alaskan range. We jumped 
from silty woods straight into swamp, for as long 
as Brooks follows Herron (who kept on down river 
to get lost) the trail is dry, but Brooks traveling 
on his own hook always jumps neck-deep into 
muck. 

Miller and I have just climbed the mountain 
over camp, which stands like a sentinel guarding 
the vast Kuskokwim valley. Up, up, but not once 
a foothold to stand upright, through knee-deep 
moss, avalanche-torn spruces, choking alders, and 
a big glacier-borne bowlder a thousand feet above 
camp— we reached aweing talus slopes, fringed with 
jagged cliffs. The sub-arctic's months of unbroken 
sunlight create the same endless, treeless rock fields 
that you see the year round on great peaks near the 



130 The Shameless Diary 

equator. The knife-like summit was like a breaking 
wave, yet with fragile Arctic poppies, defiant and 
abnormal, abloom on its crest. North, a dull, whitish 
network of bars and channels, a Kuskokwim tribu- 
tary which we'll cross to-morrow, twisted on fans 
of fresh alluvium from out these endless, angular 
peaks of terra cotta. Northward drowsed the gentle 
foot-hill country, one rounded dome standing out 
mutely to lead us on. 

But the west! There the wilderness unfolded, 
vast and dumb. There low, translucent mountains 
hovered far beyond the horizon, across some aque- 
ous gap. Over all the great Kuskokwim was sprent, 
a long-drawn lacework of crackly glass bits, daz- 
zling in the eight o'clock sun. Ghostly shadows filled 
the low ridges and flat hollows of this no-man's 
waste, burned and naked, dull carmine with fire- 
weed. Never was wilderness so silent and serene, 
so without inspiration, without even melancholy; 
so powerful, so subtle, so unplanetary. The barome- 
ter, ''made in Germany," from the junk-box regis- 
tered 26.5. And from the summit we saw, too, the 
acute angle made by the Professor's knees with his 
legs, as he stood by his tent far below, and Simon 
eating fruit — eating, eating — out of a tin cup. 

August 3. — The Professor and I clashed again 
to-day. He never knows where he wants to stop 



of an Explorer 131 

on the trail. He's a fearful combination of stubborn- 
ness and indecision. Long ago, he said that he 
expected and wanted criticism, but no one dares 
advise or suggest anything now; but may laugh 
in his blue shirt sleeve, instead, at some of his 
moves. 

This morning, as the others loafed in camp, Fred 
and I as usual hunted lost horses over miles of 
tundra and started tired. The Professor said that 
we should noon at the first river-fording. We cross 
all the streams draining the face of the range at 
right angles now. Horse-feed aplenty and water 
were at the river, but the Professor kept on a 
mile to where there was neither. As we chewed our 
dry bread, I said, "This is quite the cleverest thing 
we've done yet." "Where was there water and 
horse-feed last?" he asked quickly. "Right at the 
river," I said. He paused. "In using that word 
clever, I think you are going quite beyond your 
bounds," he said, and the crowd stared, as if a 
dynamite fuse were discovered fizzling out under 
their noses. I forbore. The idea of taking my re- 
mark seriously! He should have laughed, "If you 
want water, go back to the river and get some for 
all of us." 

Nevertheless, I'm still suffering from the inevit- 
able restraint this sort of foolishness gives. It may 
all seem a small matter, but in this life it's big as 



132 The Shameless Diary 

holocaust or battle in civilization. And this is only 
our second tiff in this lifetime of the storm and 
stress of travel, of ego galling ego. There's more 
laughter in a day than spleen. 'Those are the things 
I try to forget/' said Simon, when I told him I had 
recorded our fight. Yes, but the pleasant things will 
be remembered anyhow; the unpleasant are nearer 
truth as it is in this wilderness life, nearer the 
blessed weaknesses which make us human, which 
for some false pride the returning traveler sup- 
presses. 

Late this afternoon, we touched tree line again. 
In the moss lay the whitened saddle of the second 
horse of Brooks' to play out. Simon pounced on 
it and packed it along, girths and all. ''He's got 
stuff enough there to start a pushcart," chuckled 
Miller. . . . "Cheap! Cheap!" went a wise 
picket-pin, sitting on a mound near by. 

We're camped on white moss sloping to the 
north ; on the left a creek and spruce, on the right 
a red mountain; ahead, forest mixed with ponds, 
the foot-hills unfolding beyond in the first quiet, 
cloudless twilight for weeks. The horse-bell is 
clanging hungrily in a bank of almost Keechatna 
red-top. We've eaten four prairie chicken shot by 
King, ahead of the pack train. 

The Professor has spread a handkerchief over 
the back of his neck, because 2-mosquitoes-2 have 



of an Explorer 133 

been sighted, and is a sketch, making some sort 
of observation and scratching a bite at the same 
time. Simon, who is lying on his back, dead to 
the world, making gulping noises with his bread 
and tea, was called down for one of his favorite 
tricks to-day. The Professor saw the wood-and- 
leather lunch box (some scientific case of his, I 
think, which now is always tied insecurely on 
Bridget's pack,) full of finger-squeezed biscuits in- 
sides going to waste, thrown away by fastidious 
Simon. After supper, I found one of these hidden 
on the end of a log. I put it in plain sight on the 
moss. Simon came along, and when he thought I 
wasn't looking, stealthily threw the bread off into 
the brush — which is the kid to a T. 

And we have only four sacks of flour left. The 
summer isn't half over, and a sack lasts only one 
week. We've hardly seen McKinley. What, be- 
sides pemmican, will we eat on it? As we've come 
in — and we couldn't get out that way much faster — 
we're more than four weeks' steady travel from 
the coast. Why don't we worry ? Our stomachs are 
always full, I guess, though only with beans. That's 
why. 

We have counted on "living off the country," 
which no prospector will ever do, because of Fred's 
tales how last year these foot-hills were alive with 
caribou, moose, and bear. But except the old grizzly 



134 The Shameless Diary 

and cubs a month ago, and the sheep on Tateno 
River, not a bit of blood-red meat have we seen. 
And both quarries our bum guns lost. "I don't see 
what good it 'ud do us to see a caribou," says Fred. 
"Couldn't hit one with that old .44 of the Profes- 
sor's. Like some of them horses, it was a good gun 
oncet. . . . Yes, sir, las' year the caribou was 
thick on these hills. Must hev all migrated off. Yer 
can't tell in a big country like this. It's spotted. 
Game's here one year, there the next. I b'lieve the 
caribou has all took to the woods for winter, and 
we shan't see none without we stop to hunt." 

August 4. — We struggled among the ponds, 
crossed a river, and toiled through burned forest, 
where smouldering fire gnawed the moss, and 
black bark scaled from the spruces as if by disease. 
Bare, dead roots rose gnarled and sinewy from 
the brick-red sand, as skin might decay and powder, 
revealing the bones of a corpse. Suddenly I saw 
a tawny form swinging in the open a-top a ridge, 
and signaled to Fred, who dashed ahead with the 
old .44, twisting his neck to see the beast, running 
in circles like a man with epilepsy. We halted the 
train, whispering, "Moose!" But soon Fred reap- 
peared ahead cursing the gun, swearing he'd never 
use it again, even if a caribou poked him in the 
shoulder. He had only wounded a big grizzly lying 



of a?i Explorer 135 

on his stomach digging for picket-pins, who rolled 
over and made off solemnly into the woods. "And I 
ain't following no wounded grizzlies, not to-day," 
he added, "nor termorrow with thet old Win- 
chester." 

We covered rolling opens of white moss, where 
blue-bells, forget-me-nots, and white blossoms with 
coarse, aromatic leaves stood between lush banks 
of red-top and late snow-drifts. Bordering gullies 
of brown stones flat as a pounded pavement, where 
a drift had lately melted, willow and buckbrush 
would be planed off even with the general level 
by blizzard and cold, as if with a scythe, and lift 
atrophied twigs toward a sickly pond. . . . 

Out over the dumb valley, all day translucent 
clouds have glowed, produced anon and anon by 
mirage and obliterated; thin lines of hills, now 
intense purple, now like wasted, shadowy rainbows 
far below down there, changing deep emerald at 
twilight, foreshortened into a single line, yet shad- 
ing the darkening expanse, whence you get some 
hint of a loneliness yet unknown to man, perhaps 
of suffering. 

Again we camp in a clump of rotting cotton- 
woods, which always outlast spruce toward the 
mountains. I have shaved, I even brushed my teeth. 
Then Miller went me one better, and carried out 
his threat to bathe in the creek, But I surpassed 



136 The Shameless Diary 

him by giving my feet a soap wash. Somehow I 
never have time to take off and dry my socks. 

August 5. — Fresh meat at last, though only a 
grizzly ! 

In the cold rain, we sighted a blur moving across 
the hills. ''Moose!" again we whispered, and the 
train halted. Fred dashed over the ridge; a shot; 
a great, grayish beast with branching antlers, 
running — floating, rather — toward the mountains, 
turning now and then to stare at us through the 
fusillade. '^Caribou," we breathed, seeing its white 
rear, though "Moose, moose," insisted the Pro- 
fessor. Over the hills it leaped, down the slope, 
paused in the willows, pranced off up the talus, and 
over the ridge. I headed it around a hill into a 
creek bottom ; King saw and tore down, but it nosed 
through the willows to more peppering — from the 
.44 nevertheless — and scudded into the horizon. 
What can you expect from that old Antarctic blun- 
derbuss — and the Professor's initials carved on the 
handle ? 

We moved on, weary, hungry, cold, and wet. 
But in an hour we found Fred, who had followed 
the quarry into the horizon, standing by a brown, 
dead thing, a year-old girl-grizzly, caught una- 
wares pawing vindictively for gophers. We un- 
packed for bags and knives, skun her for the back 



of an Explorer 137 

fat, dissected her innards and captured her Hver. 
And I, for one, cut strips of warm flesh from the 
disembowelment, and ate them raw. 

And to-night King had a go at the Professor. 
Fred wanted to camp in a cottonwood grove in 
mid-afternoon, our leader to go on. On we went. 
''We'll burn moss if we can't find wood," said he. 
'Then you'll have to cook supper over it," said I. 
You could as well burn snow as this rain-soaked 
sphagnum. But we found other cottonwoods, at 
last. Nearly all the horses went down together 
through the crumbling sod of the bank we climbed 
to camp; wedged themselves, lying on their necks 
and waving legs in air turning back-somersaults, 
packs under them, tie-ropes choking them. The 
Dark Gray nearly kicked me silly, flinging his 
hoofs turtle-fashion, as I pushed him over on his 
side. Fred and I alone hauled, and tugged, and 
drove, for Simon and the Professor had welched 
up to camp. Fred was furious. He climbed the 
bank and shouted, "You evidently don't want no 
pack train any more. You don't never pay any 
attention to it." The two of them didn't budge; 
and somehow we managed to right the beasts, and 
hew a new trail up the slope. 

But sudden sunshine and the meat humored us. 
First we ate the liver, which has the odor of smelts 
and is too sweet. After, King and I started up the 



138 The Shameless Diary 

glacier stream to find a crossable ridge for the train 
to-morrow, into the foot-hills, which are growing 
higher. We trudged up roaring willow-flats, with 
right at hand the pillars of two glorious rainbows, 
then around a greenish mountain on which rock, 
like bunches of dough, was stuck all over the talus. 
Head winds knifed us, clouds poured over a flat 
peak slashed with snowy gullies that quivered 
through the scud, as it were a wall dripping with 
tallow. We found Brooks' horse-tracks (we pack- 
ers, always traveling with an eye peeled on the 
ground, can find horse-tracks wherever and when- 
ever we want to) and climbed an easy ridge by a 
lush gulley filled with pie-plant, blue-bells, and for- 
get-me-nots. And up there was a sheep, staring at us 
from a cliff ahead ! Up we sneaked. He was an old 
ram, lying down resting his twisted brown horns 
with a bothered expression on his face, and his legs 
folded under him. We dropped, and crept on; but 
when next we raised our heads, and near five hun- 
dred feet higher, there scampered the old fellow's 
harem, a string of snowballs rolling up a summit 
two miles away. *'Now ef a man was really starv- 
ing," philosophized King, " he could put in a day, 
and git one o' them old rams." 

So we've come back to a supper of dried apri- 
cots. Every twig and branch hanging over the fire 
is alive with wet socks. Simon has sewed on his 



of an Explorer 139 

black velvet cap a canvas visor made from the old 
saddle he found, and with his thin Mosaic whiskers, 
looks as if he was just off the yacht from Kishinev. 
Now he's patching his busted rubber shoe with what 
was left over from the cap. He's pitched the tent in 
such a holey place, King is sleeping outside. I hate 
the smell of punky cottonwood. 

August 6. — We hit over the sheep ridge, and 
all day plunged dizzily down and up, over slidy 
talus cut with crags, through airy abysses, across 
little streams. The train slid and floundered, mash- 
ing feet, always out of plumb and off balance ; and 
the Professor got nervous. You'll never believe 
till you see, how horses can be herded in such 
treacherous steep places, sometimes with a 400- 
foot cliff right under your own sheer slope. Bless 
the mean, tough cayuse! 

The King of France with twenty-thousand men 
Marched up a hill, and then marched down again! 

New worlds of higher peaks, freshly snow-pow- 
dered, opened near, slid-to everywhere. ''Good 
practice for McKinley," gasped the Professor on 
each summit, having always seemed to rest on the 
ascent at the wrong place, and for much too long. 

We're camped at the forks of two small streams, 
in a courtyard of snow mountains and by poles of 



140 The Shameless Diary 

an ancient Siwash camp. Bleached sheep horns He 
on the stones of an old fire; — yet nothing to burn 
but green willows. The Professor has trimmed his 
whiskers, and now resembles a codfish. He's lying 
on his stomach, studying the map with a piece of 
straw, to find how we're going to cover three 
thousand miles an hour, on a sled to be built some 
day, which he's always mentioning, to slide down 
from the top of McKinley. Miller threatens to wash 
again. 

August 7. — Forever King-of-Francing it, and — 
then our first caribou. 

This morning, King wanted Simon's Colt auto- 
matic, sacred to Simon, to stalk bear. Simon's ex- 
cuse for hogging it — though he couldn't hit a glacier 
from its moraine — was that all the cartridges were 
packed on a horse. So, seeing a bear near a big 
river, instinct overcame Fred's oath never to use 
the Antarctic blunderbuss again, and ofif he dashed 
with it. Volley after volley echoed from the old 
iron, but Mrs. B'ar and her one overgrown cub 
loped away downstream and up a bank, stopping to 
peek at us now and then from the willows, and 
say, "What sort of a noisy gilly have we here, my 
child?" King came back cursing. The Professor 
still wouldn't admit that the gun was useless, and 
made uncovert hints that Fred had buck fever. But 



of an Explorer 141 

he will never shoot. Chewing stale bread in a broad 
glacier valley at noon, I diplomatically wheedled 
the Colt from Simon, and insisted on unpacking 
horses — all, if necessary — till we found cartridges. 
At that the Professor growled, till we told him that 
as Simon ran it that gun might as well be a walk- 
ing-stick. Cartridges were in the second pack. 

Instantly a caribou came nosing up a river-bar, 
edging toward us, advancing, retreating, in short 
swinging little runs, sniffing us nervously, nosing 
the air, as if punching holes in it. It's wonderful 
how they glide, keen head and delicate horns erect, 
in that thrilling grace of limb over silt and tundra, 
where we struggle. He saw us, paused, advanced 
slowly across the bowlders to investigate, with a 
''Tsuss! Tsuss!'' like steam escaping from a valve. 
Fred fired the Colt. The creature ran back a little, 
pausing now and then to throw a puzzled look over 
his shoulder and say (to himself), "Now, what did 
you make that funny sound with?" He shook with 
sudden tremors, perhaps from a bullet, perhaps 
from mosquitoes, and loped far away. But in five 
minutes, another came bobbing and swinging up 
the bar, to within ten yards, as Miller calmly photo- 
graphed him. Fred knelt, Simon hopping at his 
shoulder, whispering, "Lemme, lemme, oh lemme !" 
Fred fired. Fired again — again. The caribou shook 
himself, turned his back; slowly, slowly his front 



142 The Shameless Diary 

legs quaked, his fragile head went down, and up 
and down, as the Professor to vindicate the blunder- 
buss blazed away, too. 

We sloshed across the channel to revel in the liver, 
blood, and entrails. It seemed to matter nothing that 
we had something beside fetid grizzly meat; para- 
mount was — though plain to all but the Professor — 
whose shot had killed ? A grand pow-wow over that 
began, all of us elbow-deep in blood, feeling for 
bullets. Fred at last found a .44, but only in the 
deer's neck. Thus the Professor's gun was vindi- 
cated, and Fred discredited with buck fever, and all 
on a scratch shot! 

Now caribou are circling around camp; one 
browsing in a meadow, one beautifully reticulated 
with black horns still in the velvet against the sun- 
set. They've investigated, and decided we're not 
worth while. For curiosity, they're quite beyond 
cats and women. Down the valley, ten sheep are 
crossing a talus to watch us cook; up, Miller is 
stalking four that impertinently peeked right into 
the green willow camp-fire. The mountains are net- 
ted with their paths, but stalk as you will, an old 
ram guards the herd, and it's off, leaping gorges, 
mounting sheer cliffs to three miles away and two 
thousand feet above at the first shot. They're very 
funny when they run — just white ermine specks 
against the vast talus, a string of snowballs, on in- 



of an Explorer 143 

visible legs, pitter-pattering with an easy, sideway 
swing from crag to crag, and never a sound below 
down here. 

So we're all happy, full of blood and fibrin ; even 
Miller. His stomach had turned, like the worm of 
history, at fishy bear meat. Cold caribou grease is 
good as butter. Simon finds it better than sugar. 
He's even thrown away the two-inch bear steak he 
saved when we shot the caribou, and had said, "I 
may not like caribou as well." 

August 8. — Angular ochre peaks feebly grassed 
and a bit too theatric as they vanish suddenly into 
calm snows; now and then a hanging glacier; 
scented fields of wild chrysanthemum deliciously 
crushed by the horses ; gnarled streams and gravels 
in a bleak valley — eight hours we beat the brutes 
up two thousand feet, down two thousand; again, 
again, and again, ever northeast toward McKin- 
ley, a mountain ascent every half hour. "G — ! I ken 
see Seattle," says Fred on a summit. ''Let's go to 
the dance to-night. I hear Tom Healey's git a new 
pornograph in his bar. See yonder, they're buildin' 
on the new brewery. Hear there's been a strike. 
Getting home to-night, we'll ask thet whiskered old 
feller that comes in on the six-thirty train how the 
new court-house is comin' on down ter Skomock- 
away." A caribou played detective on us in each 



144 The Shameless Diary 

canyon, and one peeked over a bench at us as we 
ate at noon. 

Toward four, we took a high saddle, and sHding 
down to Tonzona River, got stuck on a craggy pin- 
nacle. The beasts tumbled and coasted with the 
shale, bracing their four legs at once, scuttling down 
like peas over a gable, as we tore about crazily 
hallooing and beating them into line. Here from 
camp, in the first spruce seen for days, we're gazing 
up at that rock steeple, wondering how any horse — 
or man, for that matter — could have fallen from 
it without somersaulting in mid-air. 

A fat bull moose, skulking a hundred yards off 
in the brush, welcomed us here. Simon wanted to 
shoot him, but was suppressed. We can't carry any 
more meat, and who knows what prospector's life 
this beast or his offspring may not some day 
save ? Alaska belongs to the free miner and Heaven 
knows Nature has given him little enough help in 
his fight against her. I am glad we've no murder- 
ous sportsman in the crowd. . . . Mr. Moose 
watched us awhile with a bored expression, 
like a prize bull in his pen at a county fair, and 
made a solemn exit up the mountains, as if to say, 
"Now, who do you think those busy freaks are? 
They annoy me." His dignity was rather travestied 
by a two-foot-long dewlap, which bobbed and 
swayed as he lumbered off. Bears "galumph," 




c3 ^ 



O \T 

■^ O 

> c; 



J-. _ 









Is 



of an Explorer 145 

moose "lumber," you observe, and caribou, which 
are the most human, fascinating beings, ''float." 

Out on the gravel flat, we've been rendering out 
caribou lard from intestinal fat. As for me, I'm 
beginning to smell like a New England farm-house. 
And Miller has washed again! 

August 9. — Crossing Tonzona River to-day, our 
thousand-and-first Rubicon, all the horses were 
stoned into the vicious black water, tearing through 
drift-piles and wrecked spruces, wetting their packs. 
We mounted a bench to — desert. Bare, bleak, and 
vast, it stretched out as dumb as in the recent hour 
when its ice-cap shriveled ; strewn with white gran- 
ite bowlders, as if hurled there only yesterday from 
invisible cannon. Northeast we filed in silence. 
Smoke softened and made magical the unrespon- 
sive plain, recalling Whymper on the arenal of 
Ecuador, early rangers in the Rockies, trekking 
Boers, Napoleon back-trailing from Moscow. Far 
below its immensity, the stark forest brooded, pale 
purple, and beyond, a wasted carmine, like summer 
midnight in the Arctic. Eastward, stupendous peaks 
reared snows veiled in opal cloud and magnified by 
refraction. Over the highest, a pale blue nimbus 
shed watery rays of a million hues, down among 
ringed, azure snow squalls — the Dorean vision of 
a sunlit paradise. 



146 The Shameless Diary 

I fell behind with Miller, and talking politics! 
Now and then a larger bowlder notched the smoky 
blue-pink horizon; always gigantic, though miles 
away. We crossed a dry stream of round, white 
bowlders, like an avenue of skulls, each splashed 
grewsomely with pink lichen — and Simon found a 
new flower. We passed a grassless lake. At last 
came a roar, like a mill-race pounding over iron 
arches, and two dusky miles betrayed a clump of 
Childe Roland willows, beside another path of 
skulls. . . . 

Caribou supper is over, and Fred, as usual, is 
changing his socks. He has three pairs in commis- 
sion at once ; one he sleeps on to dry them — which 
takes more courage than I should have; two are 
hanging on the reflector to improve the bread. 
Every morning, just as we pull out, some one res- 
cues a forgotten fourth pair from a distant bush. 

. . . Fred always finishes eating first. To- 
night, the Professor remarked that he was off his 
feed. "A hog eats fast, y* know," drawled Fred, 
"and don't take no small bites." 



of afj Explorer 147 



CHAPTER XII 

UNDER THE SMILING SNOW 

August lo. — We're traveling fast — near twenty 
miles a day — speeding down the last lap to Mc- 
Kinley. 

To-day, broken ridges and brush corrupted the 
desert, and at noon we crossed the streams of a 
big brown glacier from invisible Mount Russell. 
We popped futilely at a dozen caribou in their huge 
bed of yellowed grass and pea-vines, as they flitted 
toward the notched morainal hills — grotesque and 
unstable there, under low clouds, hiding a queer 
gap in the great range. . . . 

S-t-u-u-u-n-g ! "Zzz-whoo-op !" buzzed a wasp 
from my feet, as I batted Whitef ace across a creek ; 
and executing a parabola, got in his stinger between 
my eyes. The pain almost sickened me. Miller burst 
out laughing. "Your face looks like the fat boy's in 
Pickwick," said he. I could see my swollen cheeks. 
They felt like a couple of boxing gloves hung from 
my forehead. Oh, it's a great joke. The crowd 
thought it very funny, to halt the train, and photo- 



148 The Shameless Diary 

graph me. Soon, I couldn't see light out of my left 
eye. ... 

Again we sleep on gravel. I've been digging out 
a sleeping hole to fit my hips, with the geological 
hammer ; not many beds, I bet, are made that way. 
We boiled raisins for supper, Simon sitting rooted 
by the fire, drying a sock, unable to keep his eyes 
off the pot. It's clearing, if a right eye can see the 
truth all by itself. Clean, inky foot-hills of slate, 
veined with quartz, sweep down to our shadowy 
desert. 

August II. — Left eye was shut tight as a rat 
trap at breakfast, and the right was so bad that the 
Professor had to hand me my food and spoon. 
''How many sacks of fiour are there now, Pro- 
fessor?" burbled Simon. I tipped off Miller and 
Fred not to speak up. "I have not looked up the 
matter lately," he sighed wearily, "but I presume 
about half are unused." ''Half" would be five. We 
have two. 

I stumbled about hunting horses, spite of the 
blindness, while Fred showed his first peevishness 
on the trip. "I don't see how we ken be sure of 
gitting more caribou, and we need the meat," he 
grumbled. "I b'lieve they're all high up, hitting the 
streams toward the mountains, an' don't see how 
we'll shoot more without we stop and hunt." 



of an Explorer 149 

And he growled on about "packin' up jest so each 
morning," and over the shortness of flour. 

So to-day's adventure of the moose made Fred 
hot. One old mastodon peered at us at noon as 
we chewed our rubbery biscuit stained red from 
the leather in the box strapped on the Roan, and 
he vanished before any one could swallow and ex- 
claim. Later, another thrilled the scrub willows as 
the Professor squatted to eat blueberries in a 
swamp. King stalked from behind alders; Simon, 
who couldn't see an elephant at fifty yards, snooped 
behind in his footsteps, with the .22, which made 
Fred sore. Shots and shots ; nice horns shaking the 
willows, as the beast runs and faces jerkily about; 
bobs into a big clump for good. No more shots. 
Soon we move on. Across a creek, Fred was nosing 
the grass, which was bloody, and swearing he'd 
wounded the beast, which must be dead three hun- 
dred yards off. We need the meat. Of course, a hunt 
through the brush was on? Not on your life. I 
started for the ridge half a mile away, but the Pro- 
fessor moved on the train, shouting, ''Follow!" to 
Miller, who pretended not to hear; and Fred 
wouldn't budge from his blood trail, till the horses 
had vanished some time, and we had to quit. "It's 
only crazy men will kill a moose, an' then not stop 
to git him," burst out Fred between his teeth, 
**when grub's this low." Yes, if ever we're really 



150 The Shameless Diary 

short, d'ye think we won't rise and visit on the Pro- 
fessor this dehberate waste of half a ton of meat? 

Yet soon Mount Foraker flashed forth over the 
clean, coal-black peaks, under a momentary sun, 
smashing in its white blaze and glint all concepts 
of magnificence. And then you saw it was only a 
Titanic, white-washed tree-stump, the segment of 
a mountain dropped from the moon. Such sights 
still disturb me. I ought to be old enough to under- 
stand them with better poise. . . . 

We're camped in spruce on a dry slew of For- 
aker's Herron glacier, named by Brooks for the 
Captain, who discovered the mountain — a per- 
functory compliment between the Survey and its 
rival War Department. King, Miller, and I, in a 
grumbling, wonder-how-we're-going-to-get-out-of 
the-country mood, climbed its acres of gravel-dump 
moraine, whence Fred seriously showed us how he 
could "git to her old summit in four hours. Yes, 
sir." Huge bowlders, ready to tumble at a glance 
from devilish Nature, hung on the sides of this 
wilderness of conical, even-heighted white mounds 
Stark, naked, and transitory, Nature here over- 
reaches herself from sublimity into hideousness, and 
all the repulsive elements of fear. If there's a hand 
of God, it's been more apoplectic on that moraine 
than when it blotted Pompeii or St. Pierre. Why? 
What purpose, right or vengeful, does such distor- 



of an Explorer 151 

tion fulfill? A green pond in a conical cup, walled 
by the moats of frozen gravel, casts glossy Foraker 
downward. The same crimson cloud that flatters its 
chill cap three linear miles above, fleecily spreads 
into the calm, solemn sunset of these grave-yard 
depths. A mouse runs through a sad fringe of grass. 
Below, the pot-hole where the river is born vomits 
a brown-white cataract, with the roar of steel 
girders being riveted, the color and thickness of 
canned evaporated cream. 

We follow down the scarred bed of white moss, 
of bowlders reddened as with blood, of scarlet 
berries on mean bushes. In the woods a big caribou 
whisks about fifty feet away, snuffs, punctures the 
air with his nose; patters off a-snuffing. And at 
camp, Simon, having eaten three cups of sugar and 
fruit, ladles us a half cup each. 

August 12. — Packed at last, and roaring through 
the Herron ice-stream, a herd of thirty little cari- 
bou, prancing and waving neat horns, met us as 
the goats in the Norwegian fairy-tale met the 
troll. Simon, asking what they were at thirty yards, 
dropped the Big Gray's rope in the river, so he 
bolted and scattered them. A lone dozen escaped 
in a willow slew scampered up-stream toward 
the rest, and our mighty arsenal blazed away. One 
thin three-year-old fell. I avoided the butchering. I 



152 The Shameless Diary 

don't mind gutting a bear, but caribou are too 
human and gentle. Believe I'd only skin one if I 
were starving. 

Then every hour was livened by caribou. Distant 
specks moved over the hills, herds of twenty-five 
and thirty fauns Riding to and fro, from snow to 
starker forest, out over this plain, which has not 
yet answered me, even with its melancholy. We 
halted, aimed at forty yards, and all shots went 
wild. "Chhoff !" they said, capering away in circles. 
Fred would gloomily presuppose us short of grub, 
without steaks, "three quarters lean, one quarter 
fat," as he says. One beast fell to the Colt on the 
stony ridge between two more glaciers, Simon 
grabbing the gun and plugging away after the poor 
thing was well dead. Blood was gurgling from the 
windpipe as I came up ; Miller was cutting out his 
tongue, and the Professor photographing the crea- 
ture. Simon loves to gut 'em. "I git him," said 
Fred, "right where I seen a big grizzly las' year, 
so I come there, thinkin' he might be settin' here 
yet." 

We're camped in a slit in the bare glacier bench, 
a mile away from spruce. "May I ask why we've 
come up here, near no wood or water?" said I to 
the Professor. (Of course, we were going to try 
his magnificent experiment of baking bread with 
the fuzzy white tundra moss?) "Oh, there's water 



of an Explorer 153 

here, but your eyes are too swollen to see it,'* 

answered he. '*By , my head isn't, anyway," I 

retorted, foolishly and angrily. Our third brush, or 
fourth, which? 

I'm thinking of all the wonderful things I'll do 
when we g%i to the base of McKinley, which 
should be to-morrow; shave, brush my teeth, 
change the drawers I've worn for six weeks, mend 
my sweater, cut my toe-nails 

August 13. — Fate gave us luck, to get lost and 
so not reach the base on the thirteenth with thir- 
teen horses. Two earthquakes bumped us at break- 
fast. In dense clouds we hit northwest up a 
gulch — the wrong one, I observed to Miller, but 
no one else would listen; up northeast, even east, 
and quite 2,000 feet ; then north, northwest, west — 
in circles, of course, and soon downward. Came out 
below the ragged cloud-edge. There were the 
snarled threads of a familiar glacier stream, glint- 
ing the azure of clearing! King and the Professor 
stared vacantly. I bet them it was the same river 
we'd camped on. *'0h, we've gone further than you 
think," the Professor deceived himself. ''Give you 
a two hour start traveling the way we came," said 
I, to Fred, ''and I'll beat you back to camp." No 
takers. We wound out upon the flat tundra, and you 
could have put a rifle ball into last night's camp ! 



154 The Shameless Diary 

Fred and the Professor walked north alone 
awhile, twisting their necks; then led us straight 
away from the mountains and over all the highest 
moraines. ''Now let's try going toward McKinley," 
said I, ''by skirting the foothills." "Go over there 
alone, if you want," said King. "You'll follow," said 
I. In all this beef, one man said little : the Professor ; 
seeming to put getting found again up to King. He 
decided at last to strike for a spur of the hills vis- 
ible five miles off, as a caribou tripped and capered 
after us. Skirting a pond, Fred had even announced 
(but took it back later) that he saw his last year's 
horse marks. You can't fool a Rocky mountain 
packer, oh, no! 

Camp's in the hollow of another glacier stream. 
"I believe it's a put up job between Fred and the 
Almighty not to get to McKinley on the thir- 
teenth," says Miller. Simon is sitting alone by the 
fire, waiting to snoop into the raisin sack, I suspect, 
when we're asleep. All day the Professor, with 
a wink, asked him to shoot ptarmigan with the .22. 
At each flock the horses would halt, and Simon 
would make fat little rushes at the birds, but in 
the wrong direction, or they'd fly up from under 
him when his back was turned, till Miller and I died 
of laughing. Fred took his girl's gun at last and 
shot six. So we've been eating chicken stew. My 
socks are soaking in the brook — I hope below where 



of an Explorer 155 

we get cooking water. It rains so much Fm get- 
ting moldy. 

August 14. — The congregation will please sing, 
''Nearer, My God, to Thee." We're here, where 
Brooks camped at the foot of McKinley, northwest 
face at the head of Tatlathna River, altitude 2,600 
feet, fourteen miles as the blow-fly flies from its 
summit, after forty-six days' incessant travel — ten 
faster than Brooks. 

Leaving camp, we hit straight to a mountain-top ; 
down, and straight up to another — an exasperating 
way Fred has, instead of following the connecting 
ridge, which would be easier and thus shorter. Still 
it drizzled, but suddenly I began to fear for myself 
once more. There was McKinley. Falling mists de- 
fined a blur in mid-air ; a white, feathery dome, tiny 
specks of rock and ridge lines developed, threw out 
the long, curved summit in breathless and sup- 
pressed proportion — sheer on its broad face, but- 
tressed by tremendous white haunches to right and 
left, which quaked and quivered through the mist, 
mounting 20,300 feet, to the very zenith. Thank 
God that the speechless tundra was hidden ! 

Down in a stream lay two fat caribou; ours in 
two shots from the .44, though Simon danced like 
a stage villain behind Fred as he sneaked up. Brid- 
get became a dripping butcher shop. We crossed a 



156 The Shameless Diary 

low range of hills, and such a plain of dark granite 
bowlders and corpse-white moss opened as you may 
not see beyond Siberia. And bunch grass grew 
where each horse in turn took a friendly bite — 
"a saloon weinerwurst free lunch," said Miller, 
brandishing the Professor's ten-pound willow tent- 
pole, "for mountain use," carefully whittled last 
night. A distant stream or something creased the 
waste ; Fred scared two black foxes into their hole ; 
an hour, and we descended suddenly to the moldy 
flour sacks, roaring granite, and condensed milk 
water of Brooks' camp in the willows. 

No one shouted, no one cheered. I only observed 
aloud — I talk too much and too loud — 'The baking 
problem is easily solved, isn't it?" and pointed to a 
dark tongue of timber eating up the valley from 
the forbidden tundra. You see, all the pilot biscuits 
being crumbled and eaten, we shall have to manu- 
facture in the reflector unfreezable dry flour stufif 
to eat on the ascent — "zwieback," says our Ethel- 
bert with his Teutonic leanings. 

He pulled a hair from Bridget's tail, and fitted it 
into his theodolite — or Abeny level, I can't tell the 
difYerence — and stole the summit of old McKinley 
for his waistcoat pocket. 

I have hitched the meat alforguses to a cinch line 
tied to a willow, and thrown them where the foam- 
ing silt water outwashes a steam laundry. 



of an Explorer 157 

August 15. — First, we performed duties of toilet 
long looked forward to. Then we sat around in the 
drizzly gloom with my binoculars, indicating "pos- 
sible" ridges and glaciers of the 10,000 foot range 
which we find separates McKinley from this valley ; 
each pointing out a ridge or glacier which the other 
thought was a certain other ridge or glacier. Of 
course, the main mountain towers over the front 
range. Then the Professor, still hitched to L. C, 
led Fred, to see how high on the front range it's 
possible to take horses, up the valley of the largest 
of its eight visible glaciers. Miller and I took three 
horses, flour and the reflector across the stream to 
timber, to bake the zwieback. Simon posted himself 
by the sugar. I was to bake ten reflectorfuls of bis- 
cuit, enough with tea and pemmican to last four 
men ten days, cut all in two and double bake to ex- 
pel moisture. I never want that job again. It took 
two hours to find a stagnant puddle in the distant 
timber. We'd forgotten a mixing pan, and started to 
use the teapot ; but that was no go, too deep, so you 
wrenched your wrist off in the dough. Miller took 
the B horse back to get a pot. Black clouds from the 
southwest scudded overhead, bringing rain and half 
a gale. In the wet and blow, it took just one spruce 
tree to bake a pan of bread. The rain ran down the 
roof of the reflector, dripping into the pan; it 
steamed incessantly; first the flames shot in one 



158 The Shameless Diary 

direction, then another, and once — oh, glorious 
testimonial — even collapsed the thing, bread and all, 
and folded it up. It was fierce, felling trees, dodging 
flames, mixing flour, keeping the baked bread and 
baking-powder under cover in that storm. Miller 
only brought the gold-pan (Simon was cooking 
beans in the pot), from which half the flour blew 
away in mixing, and the rest filled with sticks and 
spruce needles. The two hundred and fifty biscuits 
were done at five o'clock. Then the double baking. 
Each panful took three times as long to dry as to 
bake, while Miller — now and then resting under a 
tree as I cursed and sweated on — chopped sixteen 
logs to pack up on McKinley to our last camp 
under the snow. At half-past eight we headed back 
to the river, only half the double baking done. 

That long drive across the tundra! The dumb 
valley has spoken to me at last. It began to clear 
— the lustrous night-clearing of the North. Slaty 
clouds quivered upon us from the south under a 
sky of oceanic azure, and over the cataleptic valley 
hung a fringe of red and golden sunlight, as it were 
the border of some Miltonian heaven. We struggled 
over the bowlders. Big Buck with his sore heels 
kept taking to the mossy woods from the canary- 
colored lichen and stones of the old stream bed. 
Now a peaked rock face, now an enchanted, glossy 
ridge of McKinley swam below here ; now the dark 



of an Explorer 159 

sky was lit from that glint of unfathomable seas 
upon its walls. Forest and tundra brightened, as by 
some inner illumination. I began to think, and think, 
and think. Neither of us had spoken for a long time. 
This was a strange place, a strange hour, an un- 
natural quest. How did it all come about ? Why am 
I here? What for? Who are these companions? 
Miller paused to point out the sky ahead. I turned. 
Behind there was a range of hills — hills created in 
the moment, it seemed, in amethyst and spinel, in 
beryl and the grays of dawn ; and through and over 
them poured the rich deep light "of creation or of 
judgment" — so said some voice within me. ''The 
forbidden tundra and the smiling snow," it said 
"You are between them. Beware !" And apprehen- 
sions, recollections, a hundred answers, fantastic, 
common sense, grotesque, came to the questions 
aforesaid ; romances, confessions, wills and testa- 
ments, undreamed of tales of death, triumph and 
transfiguration — between the forbidden tundra and 
the smiling snow. 

Miller shouted in my ear. It was eleven o'clock. 
We had reached the river in the first autumn 
darkness. Its roar was terrific, and we had waded 
sudden channels bursting out over the tundra far 
from its bed. Across, camp was dark and silent. 
We made a cairn of the wood, and the scud hurried 
us back across that flooding desert, to bed under the 



160 The Shameless Diary 

last shrivelled spruces below the realms of the smil- 
ing snow. 

It's my birthday eve. We've lopped the lower 
branches of our trees, and lie spoon-fashion on 
lumpy wet moss. I shall be split down the middle. 
The blankets are soaked. The spruces leak like fury. 
We're wet to the skin. The fire, built by pushing 
over dead trees — all are rotten at the roots — is dy- 
ing. Flour, zwieback, and einback, are under our 
ponchos, the last in Simon's botany box, absorbing 
moisture to beat the cards. 



of an Explorer 161 



CHAPTER XIII 

BUTTING BLINDLY INTO STORM 

August 1 6. — Not a wink all night. We divided 
the last caribou steak, and wrung water from our 
blankets to make tea, which Miller wouldn't drink 
as we had no sugar. But we felt cheerier. The raw 
dawn shifted weary glints on the dull blue glaciers 
of the front-range. "What to do," thought I, ''but 
go on zwiebacking?" I did. Miller cut wood. The 
baking over, we chased twenty caribou that had 
peeked at us, and hit back for the river. The flood 
hadn't fallen, but was spreading out into a hundred 
channels, so we waded it to camp. King crossed on 
Big Buck to get the wood, and it was very funny to 
see him buck in mid-stream with Fred on his back, 
too — the animated old wood-pile. 

Simon was lazing by the fire, protected from the 
scud by a willow thatch importantly called a "Fueg- 
ian wind-break" by the Professor. He ran at me 
with all kinds of tales how we could get up some 
glacier — the one visible from here with the serac 
of dirty ice-blocks, under the highest point of the 
front range. The strange sacks of "mountain stuff" 
which seemed such a useless burden on the trail, 



162 The Shameless Diary 

were open, and weird Arctic clothing was passed 
around. I have drawn a pair of red stockings, with 
tassels, two pair of Arctic socks (like mittens for 
the feet), hand mittens, a pair of grimy drawers, 
and one of the green eiderdown sleeping bags. 

Now, we can't all wander about in the McKin- 
ley fogs. Some one of the five must stay to read 
the barometer at the base camp under the front 
range, whither we move to-morrow up this stream. 
The Shantung silk tent holds only four, and there 
aren't enough green sleeping-bags — weighing just 
four pounds each, unless wet — to go around. The 
Professor won't say who must stay behind, which 
seems to lie between Simon and Miller. I want 
Miller to climb, and told the Professor that it was a 
good deal to risk our lives with the kid, whose eye- 
sight and hearing are defective, and is slower than 
old Ned. "Yes, Miller is more adaptable," was all 
he answered. Miller says he thinks that Simon has 
some previous agreement to be taken on the moun- 
tain ; but I doubt that. 

Now the Professor says that he expects "a man 
to volunteer to stay behind," which is the devil of 
a scheme. Yet vaguely he adds that whoever shows 
up worst on the first day's climb, goes back. Whew ! 
How can such vacillation get our confidence? He's 
simply afraid, or unable, to decide anything before- 
hand. Of course, Simon has corraled a rucksack 



of an Explorer 163 

and a green sleeping-bag, and is importantly ham- 
mering the heads on the ice-axes. One he has al- 
ready used to chop willows. Miller saw, and cursed 
him. I'm in the tent, mending those grimy drawers. 
The rest are out in that Fuegian wind-break. No 
one knows it's my birthday. What's the use? 

August 17. — At bedtime last night the river was 
gouging away the bank so fast that Simon made a 
danger alarm by tying a rope to a log and hitching 
the end in the tent. We'd slept two hours, when the 
rope jerked. Outside, the stream was sweeping 
away that Fuegian business and splashing the grub. 
The Professor jumped up out of three inches of 
water (he's a sight when just awake, fingering his 
long, pale locks out of his eyes) and lugged the 
stuff dazedly into the brush. King wouldn't budge. 
'*You never can tell with these glaysher streams," 
he drawled, and rolled over asleep. Miller turned 
in with me, and though I invited the Professor as 
well — perhaps too insistently — he wound himself 
up in his tent well out of the wet and in the morn- 
ing was snoring there, like a big human chrysalis. 

I chased and found the horses — King tracked 
them wrong for once — by the creek where we shot 
the last caribou, and we were packed and hiking up 
the south fork of our flooding stream by noon, as it 
rained again; the fifth incessant day, mind you. 



164 The Shameless Diary 

Near the moraine of the glacier the Professor had 
explored — and little enough had he seen in the 
drizzle — the fog shut down tight. Instead of steer- 
ing on by compass, we camped, though grass still 
struggled through the moss, and we could not go 
wrong in that narrow gorge. Having nothing but 
bowlders to tie the horses to as we unpacked, 
Little Buck ran amuck, scattering sacks right and 
left, and stampeding the whole bunch. 

Thus we enter the fog to attack the virgin peak 
of Mt. McKinley, unknown and unexplored from 
all sides. Thus, without proper reconnoitering, we 
have jammed our heads into the 10,000-foot range 
which walls the main mountain mass. It seems to 
curve, and join the right-hand, or south haunch of 
the main dome, whose face has appeared quite per- 
pendicular. Below that face, between it and our 
outer range, and at right angles to our direction, 
flows Peters' glacier (named by Brooks). We 
think that it heads into a curving wall, connecting 
front range and main mountain, by which we hope 
to reach an arete of the peak. But so reticulated 
with ridges and hung with glaciers are these 
heights, that I doubt if any one of us has a clear 
idea of just where we are going to hit ; or will have, 
till clear weather comes. This is our base camp, and 
we're ready to make a ten or twelve days' attack 
on the old mountain without descending. Yet 



of an Explorer 165 

August is the Alaska rainy season, and it may driz- 
zle on till the September frosts, which will mean 
checkmate by fresh snows on the mountain. 

The outlook is cheerless : we're discouraged ; the 
low clouds rain on, and on, and on. Grub-packs and 
pack-covers are saturated. A spirit of "Oh, let it go, 
it's wet anyhow," pervades camp. The ground is 
littered with old boots, smelly sacks, unwashed 
dishes, and slabs of caribou which Fred has dis- 
carded after careful sniffs. Handfuls of fly-blows 
crust the meat bags. 

Yet the Professor talks of pushing up the glacier 
anyhow, to-morrow. He has been out reconnoiter- 
ing with King, and announces that he's found a 
way for horses across the moraine to the ice. I 
took a turn over the black hill which splits the ice- 
foot in twain, and we call the ''nunatak." Saw noth- 
ing, nothing, but crazy cataracts of mud water, in 
crazier gorges. 

August 1 8. — Wetter drizzle. I was annoyed, be- 
cause he had talked of moving, to find the Pro- 
fessor asleep in his tent with Miller, after breakfast 
over the stone fire-cairn I had built to economize 
wood; especially as he'd been trying to persuade 
King to go down the valley to hunt. King was in 
bed, too ; so what for me but to turn in ? We recited 
a few drummers' tales, and worked in a laugh over 



166 The Shameless Diary 

the querulous one beginning, ''Father, pass the gen- 
tleman the butter f when enter Simon, with a but- 
ter can full of roots, and spread his drying-frames 
all over our tent. 

Fred and I cooked tea and meat outside alone. 
Simon says that the Professor was sore because we 
didn't call him to eat. "That was the first meal pre- 
pared on the whole trip," he had complained (but 
not to me), ''to which we were not all called." Oh, 
dear! We're kept entirely in the dark about his 
plans; no one cares to make a suggestion or ask a 
question. But sometimes the manner of his silences 
lets the cat out of the bag. He has made no decisions 
yet, of any sort, whatsoever. 

So here we lie abed soaked ; listening to the roar 
of glacier streams, the rumble of snow avalanches, 
the sandy splutter of drizzle on the saturated tent. 
Now and then we peek out and make a great to-do 
if a bowlder more than ten yards off looms up. Then 
says Fred bitterly, "It's a-goin' ter clear. Yes, sir, 
she's a-goin ter clear. See her, see her." 

August 19. — And still rain. "Simon," said the 
Professor this morning through the drizzle, "go 
down to the stream and read the barometer" 
which meant that were going to hit up the glacier. 
Nothing was said about who should stay behind; 
still no one dares ask the Professor his schemes. 



of an Explorer 167 

Fred, as we stumbled in the fog hunting horses, was 
very peevish over the shortness of grub, Simon as a 
companion on the mountain, and the Professor's in- 
decision, especially as to who goes on the ascent. 
"Perhaps he thinks I ain't clean enough for his eidy- 
down," he said. All but he have sleeping bags, yet 
he is treated as essential for the climb. 

At last we found and packed with rucksacks, small 
kerosene cans. Primus stove, etc. — and Simon's 
dunnage — Whiteface, Bridget, B horse, and the 
two Grays. We breakfasted on meat tainted from 
its mildewy sack and stewed in its absorbed water, 
and plunged upward into the fog toward the un- 
known ice. No one stayed behind. Each led a beast ; 
crossed, re-crossed over sharp bowlders, down and 
up sheer, sliding talus, to stumble with feet and 
hoofs grueled by bowlders hurtled along under the 
brown foam of glacier streams. Finally over sharp 
moraine, like the Andes in miniature — to a lumi- 
nous smooth lip of foggy ice. 

We started up. It grew suddenly steep. Big Gray 
stumbled and fell, but was righted before rolling 
over. The ice whitened ; leveled. The horses nosed 
a few lateral crevasses, nickered, jumped them with 
awkward care. Gradually, huge seracs (ice-falls) 
swam through the lightening mist, and a castellated 
black ridge struck down to bisect the glacier into 
two amphitheatres. The Professor turned into the 



168 The Shameless Diary 

left hand and nearer one, against Fred's protest. 
From our futile talks, I had got too hazy ideas of 
where we were aiming to speak up. Between two 
upper seracs, fresh snow hid the crevasses, and the 
fog thinned. The Professor went ahead, sounding 
with his ice-axe. It was slow, ticklish work, winding 
back and forth over cracks that might, or might not, 
let you through to wait for the last trump — you 
couldn't tell till you tested them. The horses 
snorted; balked; leaned back, legs quivering, till 
we beat a terrorized jump out of each. I had on 
sneakers, and was thinking what a testimonial 
could be made to the rubber company for wearing 
them to 7,000 feet on McKinley, when the Dark 
Gray bungled a leap, and lost his hind quarter down 
a crevasse. All hands unpacked him, and hauled him 
by saddle tie-ropes. Now and then the other beasts 
imitated him. Higher and higher we felt a way; 
piloting each horse in turn across each crevasse, 
quadrilling — at last over clean ice, netted with 
cracks — to a dome-like summit. Beyond, the glacier 
dipped down all around to vague ice-falls hanging 
upon paste-white walls banded with brown irony 
veins; and to the left and north, but not toward 
McKinley, a possible-to-climb talus slope flanked 
the dizzy ridge. The Professor drew a brass aneroid 
from his money belt, and muttered, ''Seventy-five 
hundred feet." 



of an Explorer 169 

Fred, Miller and I, cramped in the silk tent, are 
trying to fill the oil stove to give the beans another 
boil. (Simon only half cooked them.) We are talk- 
ing weather, ice, and glacial erosion. Under us are 
wet blankets, wetter tarpaulins, wettest ice. It is 
suffocating hot; disordered food, clothing, instru- 
ments, all are steaming. Outside, some attempt has 
been made to sort the stuff, but it's rather hopeless ; 
pounds have been added to the rucksacks, and the 
sugar is syrup. The smell of meaty, mildewed cot- 
ton pervades the air. The Professor and Simon 
have gone out to reconnoitre the talus between the 
glaciers, following a route to shore (off the ice) 
explored by Fred and me, roped. . . . 

At supper, he and I shivered outside the tent, 
as cups of tea and chunks of caribou were handed 
out from low voices within here. The zwieback was 
voted a success. The Professor is going to use it 
at the North Pole. Now and then — as the clouds 
parted overhead to let down a chill, silver ish light, 
conceal the wavering edge of this snowy cistern, 
reveal shreds of sky too cold and lustrous to be 
blue — Fred would say, "Yes, sir, a hundred and 
sixty acres more of heaven cleared off. She looks 
like the break-up of a hard winter." 

We're all five to sleep here to-night, some one 
outside, as the tent, being meant for one man, holds 
only four. Just now, Simon took our breaths away 



170 The Shameless Diary 

by volunteering, and is rigging up a sort of couch 
out on the glacier, like a funeral pyre, of sacks, 
blankets, and boxes. The tent is guyed down with 
ice-axes. We have one teaspoon among us. Yes, it's 
the real Alpine thing, this. Good night. 

August 20. — The Professor and Simon climbed 
the ridge to 8,100 feet last night, reporting the 
outlook ahead through the fog ''favorable" enough 
to try. All night I lay awake listening to ava- 
lanches, squeezed between Fred and the silk wall, 
mostly against the wall, which dribbled water till 
near morning, when everything froze stiff. Then the 
Professor struggled over on his stomach, fingered 
the pale locks out of his eyes, and started the stove 
at his head, for tea, zwieback, and caribou. No one 
washed. Outside, Fred and I rubbed snow on our 
faces. No use. We had no soap. When I had sug- 
gested we take some, the Professor laughed at me. 
Then we drew in our frozen boots from the outside 
— they're never allowed to touch the tarpaulin 
under us, as they import snow — and put them on 
gymnastically, one by one, as the others lay cramped 
and still as cataleptics. 

Without, it was absolutely clear. Never were 
such steep walls, such hanging glaciers jeering at 
the laws of gi*avity, such over-brilliance of sunlight 
and azure sky. Above our amphitheatre, snow- 



•T^m 




-^ j^ c 



i-S 






a; 2 

O r- 

S 5 



of an Explorer 171 

slides had fingered straight converging paths down 
its mysterious east wall, upon the chaos of pale 
bowlders and yawning crevasse which surrounded 
us like a sea. Southwest, we looked out over sharp- 
angled black slate and rusty tuffa, clean cut and 
glistening as if created yesterday, to the foothills 
fronting the hidden Foraker; and far below and 
away shone glacial ponds like diamonds strewn 
over the forbidden tundra. But clouds were gath- 
ering. 

We were to climb the explored talus; curve 
around to its east wall ; travel south, then east, 
around the headwall of the yet-unseen Peters gla- 
cier, to the south haunch of the main mountain. 
Slowly we packed our rucksacks, and double- 
tripped the outfit to "shore." Then each corraled 
what looked heaviest and was lightest, what ac- 
cording to suspicion as he read his neighbor's eyes 
overstated its weight — or understated it — if he 
thought anything was to be gained by ostentatious 
heroism. When all had forty pounds anyway, we 
found that another trip would have to be made up 
the ridge with alcohol, tent, and stove. I had the 
two two-pound cheeses, ten cans of milk, pea soup, 
and my clothing. Simon had the little olive oil cans 
of kerosene, and Miller the two twenty-pound tins 
of pemmican, that there should be no doubt about 
his pack. At this moment it was vaguely bruited 



172 The Shameless Diary 

that Miller was to take the horses back to camp 
to-night, no matter how high we climbed to-day, 
and read the barometer below while we are on the 
mountain. How this came about, I don't know. On 
top the ridge Miller tried to tell me, but couldn't 
make it clear. I gathered that the Professor's pro- 
crastination sort of froze him into offering to sacri- 
fice himself. "It's pretty hard after all we've been 
through to miss the main chance," he told me. *'I 
only wish that the Professor had let me know 
before hand I mightn't have a try at it." But Miller 
never kicked. Surely he hadn't ''shown up worst," 
then. No one has had a chance, even yet. So the 
Simon infliction is a fact. Yet wouldn't Miller 
sooner than Simon shake hands with the danger 
devil before meeting him? 

We began the ascent of Mt. McKinley. 

Up shot the talus, straight as Jacob's ladder, 
into the clouds, and we hanging to it — Fred first, 
I last, and the rest strung in between. We kept 
now to rock-slide, to snow-slide, to glacier-edge. 
Heads bent to stomachs, sweating, gasping, we 
stopped to turn in silence every two hundred steps 
and view the poor horses, reduced to specks in 
their snowy purgatory, headed in on an island 
among crevasses — poor brutes that, twenty-four 
hours without food, had tried to find a way down 
to moss and lost their nerve. Fred kept tearing 



of an Explorer 173 

ahead, and made a point of always leaving a rest- 
ing-place just as Simon and the Professor stopped 
there. Once the Professor, carrying the tent-pole, 
fell on a snow slope, and seemed nearly to roll to 
bottom. I caught Fred at the summit. He was 
leaning over an undercut snow cornice, dripping 
icy stalactites, God knows how many thousand feet, 
into the amphitheatre of glacier seven. A sickening 
look. We lay on our rucksacks, eating the last of 
the raisins, whose bag has sloughed away in the 
wet. The others grunted up to our side; Miller 
first. 

Clouds had settled where the ridge mounted 
in the east. Thither the Professor, Fred, and I 
slabbed the talus, and sat down to wait for clear- 
ing — to wait, and wait, and wait. The base of the 
next rise lay across another cornice; to go down, 
then up to reach it, steps should be cut. I said 
that Fd follow anyone across, that way, or by the 
cornice. "No," said the Professor, "that won't be 
any use unless it clears. We must see where we 
are going." (Sic.) He went on to condemn the 
outlook into amphitheatre seven — "No possible 
slope from there, either," he said, "and even if 
we can get up this ridge to its peak, we are not 
sure of getting further." He did not see as far as 
this last night, he added. It seemed to me, that 
before butting up there we should have made sure 



174 The Shameless Diary 

of what lies behind this summit, if it took days; 
but I forbore to speak, and in such a place, that 
did not take much effort. Fred observed that horses 
properly shod could cross below the cornice. Still 
we waited. Behind, Simon in his poncho, like a 
fish-bone pen-wiper with his bow-legs, paced up 
and down like Napoleon before battle ; and Miller, 
cold as usual, with his mackinaw collar turned up, 
was lying flat. 

The Professor repeated, summarized, empha- 
sized his objection to going on, and spoke of a 
return ; but no move was made. And still no move. 
I suggested that we wait for it to clear until a 
certain moment, three o'clock say. It was so agreed, 
and on the moment we returned. The dilemma was 
restated to the others, who made no comment ; and 
down the talus we slid, as the drizzle re-began, 
double-tripping the whole outfit across the cre- 
vasses, to where tea leaves, sodden in the ice, marked 
camp. 

A catechism eked from the Professor that we 
should next try Fred's amphitheatre — the one to 
the east — which he had wanted to tackle. We sad- 
dled. Never were frozen hands so tortured on 
wetter, dripping cinches, galled in so inane defeat, 
on packs that were sponges. Back and down we 
have quadrilled over serac and softening snow- 
bridge, to camp on a quarter inch of gravel, cover- 



of an Explorer 175 

ing water-flooded ice at the forks of the glacier. 
The horses savveyed the crevasses better ; nosed and 
jumped them by instinct, in pathetic impatience at 
release, and when unpacked, tore away through 
the scud, down the lower reaches of the ice, leav- 
ing Simon and Miller in the lurch. Both return also 
to the barometer camp, to bring up fresh beasts 
to-morrow, unless it still storms. For this order, as 
affecting Simon, many thanks. . . . 

The sound of the horse-bell has just died. The 
drizzle is changing to snow. Again w^e're cramped 
in the tent on the sopping ice-gravel, playing de- 
tectives on ourselves and everything, to keep from 
touching the silk wall in the tiniest corner and 
making it leak. Under us, the sea-island cotton 
tarpaulin lets water through like tissue-paper. The 
Professor has just gone out to whirl a glass tube 
about his head — a thermometer, I think. He reports 
finer snowflakes. Every now and then we peek 
out under the flap, carefully lifting the soggy boots 
that keep it down and extend it. Of mountain 
ascents we don't say much. A snow-slide roars 
down somewhere, and Fred observes, "Another 
lumber wagon." Every now and then the Profes- 
sor clears his throat. Nothing is said of our rebuff, 
or of the future. . . . 

Well, the caribou meat is stewed in the granite 
plate. The pea soup is slowly coming to a boil. 



176 The Shameless Diary 

August 21. — Four inches of snow fell last night, 
and twice I unloaded the tent wall, which was 
pressing down and wetting us. I thought that the 
Professor would never grunt over and light the 
stove — but what was the use? You couldn't see 
the packsaddles in the fog ten feet from camp. 
Toward noon, Fred and I felt our way northeast 
up the glacier, rounding the hill of dirty ice-blocks, 
visible from so far down the valley. The Professor 
went exploring south, along the ridge leading 
evenly to the highest point of the front range, but 
condemned for its length and indirectness as a 
route to the supposed head of Peters glacier. 

Unroped in the driving snow. King and I wound 
among the sheer crevasses of the serac, where you 
could look down from four to four thousand feet. 
We poked with ice-axes, crawled from little ridge 
to ridge of hard snow. We gained the foot of a 
col joining the ridge that bisected the glacier. It 
looked possible to climb; at least, everything else 
was perpendicular. We started, when out from 
the white gloom below, and refracted to a spiritual 
nearness, tinkled a horse-bell. So Simon, afraid 
to be left behind, had brought up the horses de- 
spite the storm. We kept on harder; turning to 
the left around the spur, shinning the upper walls 
of crevasses where the glacier became almost hang- 
ing ; higher, higher, till we topped the soiled snow- 



of an Explorer 177 

blocks, and steps had to be cut in the crevassed 
cHffs. More quadrilHng to gain steep snow-bridges, 
and one huge crevasse where if you sHpped you 
shot into the eternal like slush down a gable. I 
missed a jump on the first try, and slid back — a 
little. Towering ever above, swam the wall, now to 
waver to sheerness, now settling to a human angle, 
with the refractive trick of all snowy places even 
in clear weather in Alaska. So we plugged blindly 
on in the storm, where no foot had ever trod, up 
the scaffold of the highest peak on the continent. 
Should we hit for the ridge's summit? Could 
more be proved from the top than from yester- 
day's height? Was this slope practicable for heavy 
packs? I was ardent, Fred apathetic. We kept on. 
The neve steepened, and we struck a rock guUey, 
lifting our bodies by our arms. Not a word spoke 
we. Vaguely we discerned the dark ice-blocks be- 
low, quivering deeper and deeper through the 
shaking flakes; vaguely the smooth slope, where 
the Professor had gone, arose and extended with 
us. Now treacherous, pasty granite pierced the 
snow. We'd stop to discuss if packs could be got 
up here. Now I was willing to return; but no, 
Fred had started, and must reach — somewhere. 
Two rock pinnacles, which had tantalized for an 
hour, neared into the likeness of those cliffs in 
Whymper's drawing of where old Humboldt met 



178 The Shameless Diary 

defeat on Chimborazo. We passed them. The 
coulee divided, and we came out upon a Httle nub 
of decaying granite. The storm seemed to thin. 
Light, Hke the first streak of winter dawn, settled 
upon the long ridge opposite. Suddenly, what we 
believed to be the top of our slope stretched itself 
a full thousand feet higher into the sky; and 
steeper, steeper. "Look, look!" I cried, and if the 
ridge had crumbled with us into the valley, we 
should have still stood staring. 

That was enough for Fred. It was after four 
o'clock. Rock had ended. Sheer, hard neve, cov- 
ered with six inches of fresh snow, down which 
balls were even now grooving trails, alone filled 
heaven. The aneroid said nine thousand feet. Fred 
crawled to the edge of the granite nub, to gaze 
straight down the most disturbing distance yet, 
into the abandoned amphitheatre of yesterday. 
When I look into such places, I have a feeling — 
not vertigo, not exactly fear, that worries me. I 
think too fast and too much, and of impulses which 
are not quite sane. So, down we slid, again de- 
feated, Fred recklessly, I carefully bridging the 
crevasses ; past the Humboldt cliffs, where the snow 
shut in denser than ever, and the long white ridge 
became a dark, magic line over the shadowy glacier. 

Four horses were shivering on the gravel humps 
near camp. Miller was in the tent, making pea 



of an Explorer 179 

soup. From a distance, Simon and the Professor 
approached wearily. *'We didn't think that you'd 
go so far," said the Professor, when we told that 
our ridge could be climbed, possibly with heavy 
packs. He paid little attention. "But you see," he 
discouraged, ''even if it can, we don't know what's 
beyond. The problem is," etc., and he went on to 
tell how he and Simon had looked into a valley 
beyond the long ridge toward Mount Foraker, 
where the slopes were better, he said, and "we 
can get around to the main mountain on the divide 
between them" — (McKinley and Foraker, doubt- 
less) — and where the rock was "much better, dark, 
apparently slate, and not that treacherous granite." 
Then he ordered to pack up and return the whole 
outfit down to the barometer camp ! 

Wondering how the weather could have allowed 
him to see so much in the next valley south, I 
protested mildly, "I hate to leave this place so 
soon and so suddenly." "So do I," he answered, 
"but what else is there to do?" And then recurred 
to me what I had left there in mid-air with Fred, 
that on a mountain of this size, unexplored, yet 
unseen in its entirety, it was foolish to stake all 
on a dash up one questionable pinnacle found 
blindly in a ten days' storm. 

We started down to the valley — irony of ironies 
— as the snow clouds overhead boiled in the for- 



180 The Shameless Diary 

gotten gold of sunset; and under a shreddy cloud- 
edge draping the glacier, the forbidden tundra, 
far as the eye could reach, shone clean and 
rosy. . . . 

Just now, after cleaning all the soggy food and 
stufif out of the large tent, and crawling into our 
steaming bags in the old comfortable way — feet 
on dunnage, heads on pants and sweater wrapped 
in poncho to extend the wall and get the drip — 
Simon made Fred and me very, very tired. "Well," 
said the kid, with most transparent bravado, "now 
I think that our chances for getting to the top of 
McKinley are brighter than ever. We'll get around 
to the south side of this glacier to-morrow, where 
the Professor explored, and we're practically cer- 
tain of finding a good way to the summit of this 
front range." 

Neither Fred nor I spoke. That sort of insin- 
cerity makes me boil. As if it would do any good 
in such a story-book, Arctic traveler-fashion, to lie 
in order to keep up our spirits. Pretty examples of 
courage men must be to rig up a fool's paradise 
around them to give them nerve. Victory lies first 
with whom best faces the darkest side of the picture, 
and fights upward from the worst. Wonder if 
Simon wasn't parroting the Professor. 



of an Explorer 181 



CHAPTER XIV 

REMORSE AND SALT 

August 22. — To-day, dazing sunlight and ragged 
cloud revealed each disheartening detail of our 
valley, and countless more walls all quite perpen- 
dicular, netted with the converging paths of ava- 
lanches. Fred went wrong after the horses. Miller 
and I saw and chased them, down the glacier 
stream onto the now purple tundra, whence over 
the great gravel moraine all the slopes of the val- 
ley toward Foraker, peered into by the Professor 
yesterday, were laid bare. They astounded me. 
All were more impossible than the ridges aban- 
doned. Thinking again of Simon's last night's 
"holler," as Fred calls it, I wondered had the Pro- 
fessor seen anything at all there. With Fred, we 
agreed that our only chance to reach the south- 
west shoulder of the summit dome was by follow- 
ing Peters glacier to its supposed head. "I always 
wanted to go there first," said Fred (but I don't 
remember that). The Peters ice flanks the actual 
face of the mountain, behind the front range; but 
about twenty miles northeast of us turns at right 
angles and flows straight out upon our tundra. 

We told this plan to the Professor. He cleared 



182 The Shameless Diary 

his throat and said that first we should look into 
his Foraker valley from a hill downstream. The 
quick descent of five thousand feet has depressed 
us all physically, made us logy and headachy. We 
climbed this hill, browsing lazily on blueberries. 
Beyond rose another, and another; and though no 
more of his valley was to be seen than from back 
of camp, the Professor would go no farther to sup- 
port his yesterday's enthusiasm. So silently, and 
quite out of caribou — though as we descended a 
big buck skipped from the willows at the glacier's 
gravel-foot and past Miller's nose — we faced for 
Peters. . . . 

Thus outwardly begins again only the old grind 
of packing across these vacant hills; but a sus- 
picion distorts every moment of the day. So far, 
I hope this diary outlines the passions of explora- 
tion in moments of vivid struggle against nature 
at her worst, written down under their own stress ; 
the thing as it was, at the time when it was — neces- 
sarily, and so the more humanly — with all the in- 
evitable prejudices of personal equation. But now 
I seem to feel that the Professor is not trying 
his best to climb the mountain; that recognizing 
that it is beyond us, he is making half-hearted 
tries to escape our judging him a quitter. I know 
that I speak and growl quite as if I were sure of 
it. How unfair this may be, I hope is yet to be 



of an Explorer 183 

told in the supreme test of a final try; yet I think 
that events up to now justify my view, even from 
the standpoint of a return to civilization, with its 
viewpoint — ever served us by the explorer; ever 
poles away from any reality. Every member of 
the party, except me, has always spoken as if he 
thought that to reach the top of McKinley would 
be little harder than scaling — Pike's Peak, for in- 
stance. Simon has said that he judges from Her- 
ron's sketch of McKinley, made from a hundred 
miles away, which looks like a white potato. The 
Professor has declared oracularly that we should 
scale five thousand feet a day. Nothing could shake 
these opinions up to now, and doubts which I used 
to express were smiled on as mildly mutinous, 
though I alone of us have had experience on snow 
mountains in Alaska. If their confidence has only 
been a prop to determination, I hold it a pretty 
false, even cowardly frame of mind in which to 
approach a great task. If such self-deception is 
customary, as I gather from their talk that it is, 
on polar ventures, it is easy to understand all this 
constant failure in the far North. I started out 
strongly doubting that we could ascend McKinley, 
as many men of Alaskan and Alpine experience 
agreed, but determined only to make the hardest 
kind of a try. 

Thus we have driven the train northeast over 



184 The Shameless Diary 

a big hill, to camp on a small, clear stream flowing 
from foot-hills at the middle of the front range. 
On top, Fred shot a caribou doe. Simon has scraped 
the hide, and tacked it to the moss with wooden 
pegs. . . . 

I have had to air my troubles to some one, and 
I knew Miller could be trusted ; his voice is so low, 
anyhow, you never hear him. We climbed a hill to 
stare at McKinley, whose immensity grows into 
you, through you. We talked. I told him that I 
was angry with myself for having consented to 
come with these people, whose experience on snow 
mountains was nil — though God knows, mine is 
small enough. I felt guilty, that in my ardor to get 
back to my beloved Alaska at any cost, I had swept 
aside prudence and common-sense. I felt most 
foolish and simple-minded that I had not faced the 
issue squarely, but with deliberate blindness have 
swallowed all their precocious confidence. Lord! I 
could go on like this for pages, but I won't. 

The Professor determines on a certain move; he 
has the feat accomplished before starting. He will 
not hear of difficulties, and when his unreasonable 
dream of success balks, or turns out a night- 
mare, he is all meekness and dependence, and asks 
your advice in a hopeless, demoralized way. When 
we turned back from this Foraker valley, I said 
again that I was sorry to leave the front range. 



of an Explorer 185 

''Why didn't you mention that before?" he re- 
proached me. Thus my antagonism to him and all 
his ways increases. But I criticise him with no con- 
ceit that I could do better; I couldn't do as well 
with our equipment and personnel — I can't keep 
my temper, nor take anything in life, even reach- 
ing the summit of McKinley, with his placid, stub- 
born seriousness. 

Miller said: "When I read about you all in the 
papers, I thought that you were experts at moun- 
tain climbing." He agreed with my worst suspicions 
about the Professor's not trying his best. 

Returning, we saw the horses wandering down 
the tundra, and the Professor on an opposite hill, 
staring like a Memnon in the twilight at our uncon- 
querable mountain. 

August 23. — Sacred to the memory of Simon's 
botany box, slippery, unpackable thing, curse of 
the whole pack train and especially the P. R. Sor- 
rel, who carried it. We cremated it after break- 
fast this morning. The epitaph : 

The botany box, 
Oh, the botany box ! 
How many hard knocks 
Gets the botany box. 
We shower with rocks, 
And squeeze our old socks 
On the botany box, 
Oh, the botany box! 



186 The Shameless Diary 

The Professor got up gumption to examine the 
now soggy zwieback stored in it. Having tried to 
dry in the reflector the bottom layer, which was 
mush, we ate half of it. Thus the box was super- 
fluous. The rest we put into sacks, ''to dry by venti- 
lation," said the Professor. Simon even smiled at the 
funeral. Ere lighting the pyre, Miller photographed 
him, posing over his precious, outrageous treasure. 

Last night the Professor came down his hill 
with a grand tale that the 12,000 foot ridge, run- 
ning north from the main mass of McKinley, was 
broken, letting Peters glacier flow east into the 
Sushitna valley, not out upon our tundra, so that 
we cannot reach it without crossing the front range. 
None of us had noticed this. I climbed the Pro- 
fessor's hill before breakfast, and wasn't convinced. 
After, he dragged Fred and me up there with him. 
Neither of us had his sharp eyes, so he sat down 
and talked observations with his "made in Ger- 
many" compass, which I copied into a little blank 
book. Thus Fred's and my blindness excused a 
reconnoissance. After a long rag-chew, the Pro- 
fessor decided to climb with me a peak at the point 
where I think that Peters, beyond it, bends toward 
the valley; we could see more from a higher snow 
peak near by, but the Professor seemed shy of 
exertion. 

In the peculiar, deadening silence usual in his 



of an Explorer 187 

companionship, we two struck off at an angle from 
the pack train, and dawdHng along, watched it stop 
to play hide and seek with caribou, hear shots, see 
it move quickly on. At the foot of our mountain, 
he insisted on eating our fried caribou chunks be- 
fore nine o'clock ; and then fell in the most humor- 
ous manner into a crick you could spit across. We 
toiled up a long, monotonous ridge. Yards of fine 
talus near the top started sliding down with me, 
and I jumped to firm rock with an icy heart. You 
almost needed a board to sit on the 6,000-foot sum- 
mit. From here, Peters plainly bent out toward 
our tundra (as indeed Brooks maps it) ; and though 
we could see above the bend no more than from 
camp, a break in the 12,000-foot, main north wall 
of McKinley, and so the Professor's suspicions 
were plain absurdities. He admitted this, for a 
wonder. The snow peak I had wanted to climb 
shut out any good view. 

*'Our first task is, therefore, to thoroughly ex- 
plore Peters glacier," he said, "trying to find a 
more practicable route up the mountain." "And if 
we don't find one?" I asked. He coughed. "We will 
do all we can," he answered, "m our short remain- 
ing time." 

From that summit we picked out a camp for to- 
morrow on the opposite (north) side of the Peters 
ice, right at the bend under the 12,000-foot wall, 



188 The Shameless Diary 

on the last stream-netted talus of a dozen valleys 
meeting the lower reach of the glacier. I was for 
crossing yonder; burning to peek up the awful 
gap between McKinley and the fatal front range, 
sheer 5,000 feet on one side, 15,000 on the other; 
but the Professor wasn't, and sighed that we'd "see 
it all to-morrow," so we hit for camp. First we 
tried one arete down, which he pronounced too 
steep ; then from another we glissaded over a long 
snow bank, to where a stream ran under the gray 
ice among Titanic cones and arches. We walked to 
the middle of the two-mile-wide glacier, now slip- 
ping over streaks of clear ice, now ankle-deep in 
muck, now toiling over rock moraine like Hedin's 
pictures of hummocks on the Gobi desert. The roar 
of streams came up louder through the gravelly 
ice, and surface trickles cut bowl-shaped meanders 
down. The Professor was bum at picking a way; 
he puts it up to you for a while, and then insists 
on changing the route, so I always swore, when 
he spoke, that it made no difference how we went. 
It was one of those endless, useless walks; the 
spruces below the moraine never, never showed, 
for we were on the wrong periphery of the glacier, 
which bowed slightly to the south. At last a rocky 
gulch, leading to cottonwoods. 

Finally I broke silence. It came hard to make him 
discuss our rebuffs and chances on McKinley. He 



of an Explorer 189 

expressed the same blind confidence that we should 
reach the summit, but now it seemed tinged with 
melancholy. He concealed his doubts badly by a 
kind of smiling naivete, which made his confidence 
ring even less sincere — and that sort of self-decep- 
tion makes me furious. The momentary rasp in 
his throat, his precise phrasing, grated on my worn 
nerves; but I bore it quietly. At length, in a mo- 
ment of real depression, he said, ''Yes, I'm afraid 

it may be as Doctor said, that it will take 

two seasons to climb this mountain." I was, for 
once, all tact and sympathy, but it was like draw- 
ing teeth. Of course, failure would be more ter- 
rible for him than for me. In my selfishness, I 
had never thought of that, till this real flash of 
doubt bared the poor man's heart. At the end, I 
said that we ought not to start home with less 
than one sack of flour and one of beans, even as- 
suming we can get plenty of meat. Again he did 
not agree, glossed over all evident contingencies, 
and said something about its being only two days' 
rafting to Cook Inlet down Sushitna River, were 
the range once crossed. Hereabout it is impassible 
for horses, and returning, we should have to travel 
at least a hundred miles farther along its face, 
before reconnoitering for a pass in a region where 
all Government reports say there is probably no 
pass; cross the mountains, abandon the pack train, 



190 The Shameless Diary 

and raft. That would take two weeks at least — 
a sack of flour lasts one — but it is probably longer 
to raft down the Kuskokwim to Behring Sea. He 
heard me in silence, but I think my words told. I 
urged no return, and was all enthusiasm for ex- 
ploring Peters. We agreed for that, anyhow. 

And so we stumbled from a hedge of white 
granite bowlders to sparse spruces eating up along 
the roaring water, the first camp for a month in 
timber. There sat King and Miller, gazing at the 
sunset over the mountain, and a mighty tale they 
told of two big caribou killed, and a pair of hind 
quarters which was all one horse could carry. 

Believe I've just eaten six steaks, and without 
salt, for it's nearly all used up, and we're saving 
a pinch to take up the mountain. 

August 24. — Anyhow, I broke the record this 
morning by eating nine steaks, fat and rare. And 
walked it all off, chasing the horse four miles down- 
stream. 

While packing. Miller — thank Heaven ! — was 
ordered to take Simon's place, going to camp up 
the glacier to-day; and no sooner that, but we 
made a discovery which sure must change our luck. 
Simon, glum at being left behind, plugged away at 
mending an old boot, instead of washing dishes — 
his duty. There's an awful itch in the fingers of our 



of an Explorer 191 

mechanical genius to tinker with something. Fred 
looked at him and said, ''Whenever Simon tears his 
pants, he puts them away in his dunnage, and mends 
another pair, so as always to keep some play on 
hand." And if Fred sees him sewing, he calls out, 
''Whang-leather it!" Whang-leathers are the raw- 
hide strips we use in place of twin. 

But listen. W^hen we crossed the glacier stream 
at last, to follow up its north bank to the ice, wx 
saw chopped poles there arranged like a big 
clothes-horse, meaning an old camp. I investigated, 
first finding a pair of soggy overalls, and said 
"White men!" to Fred, because Si washes would 
never discard a whole pair of overalls. Fred, swear- 
ing Indians had stopped there, said, "Don't Si- 
washes wear pants ?" as I came on two mule shoes, 
and the Professor appeared with a camera film 
wrapper, saying, "Then your Siwashes have begun 
to take photographs." The while I spotted a red 
coffee can lying under a bush — opened it — white 
stuff was inside — looked like, felt like, tasted like — 
was — SALT ! Last night Fred was pining to trade 
off our last fifty pounds of sugar "for one small five- 
pound bag of salt." Food is slimy without it. Fred 
wouldn't let the stuff out of his sight, and put 
enough for use on the mountain into his very dirty 
handkerchief, and hung it on his belt. The red 
canful we cached there. 



192 The Shameless Diary 

Whose camp is this ? What are white men doing 
here? Fred suggested that they are the "railway- 
surveyors" that Brooks met last year headed hither 
from Xanana River. But I think the camp is this 
year's.* 

Straight toward McKinley we headed, over the 
Peters moraine's endless hills. Soon, between its 
chaotic esker of irony bowlders, and white granite 
peaks, ponds the size of your hand glazed each 
valley, reflecting downward all the cloudy pomp of 
McKinley. Fed by silver threads from high, shriv- 
eled glaciers, they seeped down by hidden ways 
to the ice river. A caribou trail, for green moss 
edged the ice, led to the last alluvial fan at the 
great bend in the glacier, where you can throw a 
stone and hit the north wall of the mountain, pour- 
ing down glacier upon glacier under trailing cloud 
from 12,000 to 15,000 feet above the forgotten sea. 
Here we have camped (as an outraged old grizzly 
galumphed away, turning to think insulting things 
at us over his shoulder), but not on the flat by 
the stream, whence we could see up Peters, for 
the Professor pig-headedly insisted in pitching 
the tent close under the esker, away from water 
and view. 

We climbed the moraine. "Yes, sir, yes, sir, sure 
as I live she leads over a low divide to Sushitna 

*An Alaskan Federal judge had been reconnoitering there. 



of an Explorer 193 

River," cried Fred excitedly of the mile-wide ave- 
nue of ice, the part heretofore hidden. It rose due 
south, cleaving McKinley from the front range, 
crumpling one huge arm against the main slope 
of the mountain, hanging countless stiff Niagaras 
on both walls. Yet no further than the middle of 
the long, sheer face of the mountain could we see, 
to which our line of vision is now parallel. There, 
under rose-colored precipices — the pink cliffs, we 
call them — the mountain plants a black haunch out 
into the sloping ice ; nearer, the front range plants 
another. The glacier slips between them; vanishes. 
What is beyond? The Sushitna watershed? The 
headwall of this Peters glacier? The coveted south 
arete? What? As we wandered up there, altitude 
5,000 feet, the Professor built a fire of moss — 
Fuegian moss, he calls it — just to prove it will burn. 
Of course it did, after these three clear days. 

So we have eaten, cooking with the same old 
logs packed up to our first base. The Professor's 
tent is cocked high up on the esker. Here in ours, 
luxuriating in the space left by Simon, Fred says 
he can't sleep to-night for wondering what lies 
beyond the beyond of that next bend in the glacier. 
A strange man, he, indeed. 



194 The Shameless Diary 

CHAPTER XV 

KICKS, DISCOVERIES, AND A DREAM 

August 25. — Second Base Camp. 

Late and lazily as usual we rose this morning- 
and ate. The Professor, when all was skookum 
for a start onward up the glacier, exclaimed, "Oh, 
I haven't greased my boots yet!" So Fred and I 
dashed across the three bands of morainal chaos — 
colored black, then red, then gray, according to 
what rock the ice tears from the main wall in its 
resistless flow, and each band a mountain range 
in miniature — to the rotting neve in mid-glacier, 
strewn with white bowlders from the pasty granite 
front range. "Spick! Spick!" went the ice, yield- 
ing to hurried little surface rills cutting tortuous 
channels. 

The plan was for all to ascend the glacier as far 
as we could, Fred and the Professor to remain 
overnight to see where horses could be taken, and 
explore for a ridge leading to the south arete of 
the peak. We carried light packs with two nights' 
grub for two, and the alcohol stove. 

Soon dark cones rose truncated where cre- 
vasses had healed. We kept on fast. It was bully 



of an Explorer 195 

traveling. Slowly the imperious roadway all above 
snow-line unfolded, rose and extended with us; 
overpowered. Cones of a medial moraine forced 
us to its middle. We followed a thundering river 
through blue arch and tunnel of its own cutting. 
It squeezed us against the towering moraine, and 
deep in its bed we found a ford among big erratic 
bowlders. 

The Professor and Miller appeared specks be- 
low in the distance, on the now white, crackly 
desert, which undulated like the oiled surface of 
a sea, where we trudged for hours, seeming not 
to move. Hanging glaciers, split by irony pin- 
nacles, over-hung like Titanic crocodiles, gray 
green, and saffron, vomiting brown chaos into 
jagged black caverns, splitting smooth pillars of 
pearly marble, bearing ice beyond ice in dazzling 
levels and ample folds. Color? We had discovered 
color! The front range wall bore only atrophied 
ice, and far above us, over terraced lines carved 
in past years when the ice river was more Titanic, 
grew the Professor's darned, reddish Fuegian moss. 
An azure wrist — a snow-bridge — buttressed a huge 
detrital cone on the w^hite plain, and beyond a city 
of brown pyramids huddled at the mysterious bend. 
One big feeder scruffed up vmder the ''pink cliffs" 
in the cirrus gloom of three linear miles overhead, 
just tipped by the weak, slow-moving sun. 



196 The Shameless Diary 

Fred waited for the others, dwindhng hke a 
flash into a speck. I kept on alone with beating 
heart. The ice swooped around the bend toward 
the front range, I with it. Was this a pass to the 
Sushitna? Fred had still been betting, "Give me 
four days' grub and Til make Tyonek up this 
glaysher. Sure as I stand here, she goes down to 
the Sushnita. Easier than I thought. It's a cinch." 
You could not tell. Now the ice vanished around 
another bend, the dark buttress of the pink cliffs 
and into the mountain. Up there, I turned and 
looked downward. 

The dizzy unworldliness of it all was intensified, 
compressed by perspective. You seemed suspended 
in air, infinitely near, yet infinitely far from ice or 
rock wall. The sky overhead was blue-black. The 
haze had dissolved, leaving rainbow islands of cloud 
at succeeding spheres of the shadowy cut, casting 
down abnormal shadows, swift darknesses, blazing 
revelations. Think of it — this mile-wide trail, un- 
known miles long, hemmed by one wall a mile high, 
another three sheer miles, and so straight you can 
hit its base with a snowball, as you look up at its 
summit, the apex of North America. Somewhere 
a snow-slide thunders, a tiny white cloud of fuzz 
like the puff from ten thousand cannon blurs the 
wall, its whisper dies away into the pre-creative 
silence. 










l^ Si 



of an Explorer 197 

I thought that the Professor might be sore at 
my tearing on alone, and discovering beyond the 
buttress; so I waited awhile in an ice cavern, in- 
visible except to the rounded winter pallor of my 
pit, and the unreal sky. But I couldn't wait. On- 
ward, I passed along the sheer black ridge cutting 
into the ice under the pink cliffs, heavy with four 
Alpine glaciers, and into the upper amphitheatre. 
The glacier bowed east. Suddenly a wall of ice 
peeked out from behind the buttress — ridged, pin- 
nacled ice, growing into an enormous serac, the 
whole breadth of the glacier, massing into a white 
Niagara, hinting of the world's end, the unknown 
range, and the hid deserts of the moon. It towered, 
widened. I was planning to scale it and return be- 
fore eating; but, aching with hunger, I saw the 
human trio behind crawling along an ice ridge, 
and waited. They caught up, and the Professor 
called me down — but only for the danger of gla- 
cier traveling alone. "If anything happened to you, 
it would be my responsibility," he said. Gosh! 

We all ate zwieback and fried caribou chunks 
in silence. Then, at the great serac-foot, the Pro- 
fessor produced two horse-hair ropes, and insisted 
that we hitch together, by twos, Fred and me, 
he and Miller. We started up the ice-fall, struggling 
among its wrecked white skyscrapers that jutted 
out in cubes and blocks beyond gravity angles; 



198 The Shameless Diary 

crawled along little snow ridges, shinned miniature 
Matterhorns, where the sudden deeps were chill 
and ugly. A blizzard began. We tried lead after 
lead to the top of the chaos, but steepness and the 
driving snow herded us back. 

It was four o'clock, and Miller and I should be 
starting, to reach the base camp where Simon was 
expected from the spruces. Each of the others were 
carrying eight pounds, I fifteen. I delivered to Fred 
the hind quarter of caribou in my rucksack, enough 
to feed a family a week. He and the Professor 
would try to find room for the tent a little higher 
up. Suddenly the Professor turned, and in that 
storm where you couldn't see your hand before 
your face, said in his cocksure way that we should 
climb McKinley from the top of the serac; that he 
and Fred were going to stay up there for keeps. 
Having come up here on a reconnaissance, we had 
seen more bewildering glaciers and ridges than 
we could have imagined from below. "You other 
three can pack up the rest of the mountain outfit 
to-morrow, can't you?" added he. I said I thought 
that it was too heavy, but we'd try. Fred, as usual, 
said nothing. The Professor began naming over 
the stuff, forgetting all the heavy things. "You'll 
have Simon to help you," added he. Fred and I 
said that we didn't think that Simon could ever 
find the base camp from the spruces. "But we can't 



of an Explorer 199 

start up the mountain without him," objected the 
Professor. That capped my annoyance, and I re- 
viewed my old protests about Simon, laying them 
a little thicker. "He's probably as opposed to your 
coming as you are to his," said the Professor. 
''Don't speak of us in the same breath," said I. 
"At least he's not such a kicker as you," said the 
Professor, and I retorted that it was generally 
self-respecting persons that kicked, for they know 
when they're being imposed upon. "This Jew'll 
stand anything you do to him," said I. "It's the 
Jew nature. And sometimes I can't help admiring 
him for it." 

Scuttling back to camp, down, down, through 
the white skyscrapers, past the snowy pillars of 
Hercules, where the flakes thinned, by the hanging 
mound, and the polychrome moraine, to base camp 
on the flat talus in the rain — Miller said that I 
hadn't laid it on Simon heavy enough. The Pro- 
fessor stands more cursing of the kid from Miller 
than from me. And Miller isn't idle at it. 

Going to bed just now, weary and burning in 
the rain, I said that the next expedition I was on 
would be my own. "For God's sake, count me in," 
said Miller. 

Is Simon here? You bet he isn't. It's only eight 
miles straight up from the spruce, but bats are blind, 
and worms are deaf. 



200 The Shameless Diary 

August 26. — Last night I had a horrible dream, 
such as comes in childhood, and usurps the next 
day's reality. It hung upon a name, and it's years 
since I've remembered dream-names. Miller and 
I slept together and all night as the drizzle pep- 
pered the tent, he regaled me with his Don Juan 
adventures in room ten of the Bohemia Hotel, 
Tacoma. 

It seemed in the dream that I was very young, 
too. In all our kid games, I was made to go indoors 
long before dark, at first I didn't understand why, 
while other children still played outside. Growing 
curious at last, I would hide away down the lane 
back of the house at dusk, determined to see, or 
rather feel the mystery. Though I did so for days 
only, those days gave the vision a sort of cumu- 
lative horror, for years of mounting fear passed 
in that time; the sane experiences of advancing 
manhood, their heightened knowledge and pride 
in being, increased my sensitiveness to disease and 
shame of all unnaturalness. I came upon the crea- 
ture near the barn. 'The Nij, the Nij !" those 
words, his name, formed on my tongue. I saw him, 
a repulsive, deformed male, naked, pink, but 
very human, leaning upon one crutch appealing 
to me with some ghastly suffering. I burned with 
pity (and they tell me I'm hard-hearted). Slowly 
this waxed into a heart-sympathy, then into affec- 







22 



of an Explorer 201 

tion tempered with shame, for somehow I felt 
responsible for his living. He was a family dis- 
honor, a skeleton from the closet of heredity, 
a breathing stain, which it wracked the hideous 
numbers of dream-fear to behold. He was the fruit 
of some loathly, indestructible family crime. Thus 
had I been guarded against him. It became a per- 
verted passion with me to seek him out. I felt a 
blood to blood love for him, rooted in all his very 
unspeakableness and deformity. He would run 
away, but appear again, even follow me when I 
did not pursue. Once I cornered him in the shadows 
of the veranda of the house next door. I com- 
manded him to speak, or I should beat his flesh. 
He began pleading with me for mercy, for relief 
from some agonizing thrall. My heart thrilled out 
to him. Tears in his eyes, he raised a long, shriv- 
eled arm, holding it pointed at me. The limb ex- 
tended till it almost touched me — like the arms of 
changelings in Norse folk-lore — while he stood 
still. It was all but about my neck, the crutch too, 
growing longer and raised to strike, when — my 
mother walked down the veranda steps; and I 
woke. 

Miller's stomach went on strike after we washed 
in the glacier stream. (It's half a mile from camp, 
thanks to the Professor, for the rock pool by the 
tent dries up every morning.) Miller had nausea 



202 The Shameless Diary 

and diarrhoea. Try as we could, the mountain outfit 
wasn't to be compressed into less than four forty- 
pound packs, and forty to the man is the limit for 
glacier work. No Simon, and we didn't expect him. 
Should I go up the ice with all I could carry? I 
thought about the Professor's order not to travel 
alone. But this was emergency, and by disobeying 
I might visit his fussiness upon him. Anyway, either 
Fred or he would have to come back for Simon, if 
climb he must. I decided to go; then not to; then 
chafed at lying still all day. I couldn't stay there. 
Miller saw me packing, and insisted on coming 
with me. We struggled over the colored moraine- 
mountains, I with all I could carry, he with lighter 
stuff — the kerosene cans. A thick drizzle set in, 
hiding your hand before your face. As we left, two 
sheep prowled on the great north wall near camp 
Miller stopped twice, exhausted, before we 
reached clear ice, where he caved in. I urged him 
forward to the lone cone of white rocks, where 
he cached his load tied in a rubber coat, and re- 
turned. Keeping on alone, I might as well have 
been blind in that fog. Under the weight I could 
take only six hundred paces at a time without rest- 
ing; six hundred, six hundred, I counted each one, 
measuring out the eight miles. Now the long medial 
moraine, now the ice valley, now the lone cone 
held by the wrist of ice, where feeling left my 



of an Explorer 203 

shoulders. Now the blank glacier seemed a limbo, 
in which I must wander in circles, lost for ever; 
now the cloud-whirled vision of a feldspar para- 
dise. It grew clearer. But never should I cross the 
plateau at the great bend, reach the huddled gravel 
cones! . . . Not till the long desert of the 
clear stream under the great serac, did Fred and 
the Professor appear as specks ahead. They looked 
from far, and stopped, seeing me alone; looked, 
and came on running. I met them where you walk 
on the face of a sheer wall to avoid the amphi- 
theatre where I rested yesterday. 

The Professor heard my story in silence. Fred, 
coming up, said ''What you bellyaching about?" 
and almost without being told, dashed on past down 
to camp, to find Simon. (Guess he was out of chew- 
ing tobacco, and you must always be tolerant with 
a chewer suffering so.) The Professor took less 
than half my load, and we climbed the serac, close 
to the main mountain wall, by a crafty combina- 
tion of snow pinnacles, where I had urged going 
yesterday. For the first time we really had to rope 
among the black cliffs and rotting spires of ice and 
gravel. Then a snow slope steep enough to make us 
switchback, then another, and another. The tent 
specked the vast polar plain of the upper glacier 
opening suddenly before, seeming to retreat end- 
lessly as we advanced. . . . 



204 The Shameless Diary 

Here, between the stern front range, and the 
southern haunch of the main mountain, a long, 
snowy spur makes out, reaching to the base of the 
steep rocks on its southwest shoulder — our old 
objective for the ascent, visible from Brooks* camp. 
The Professor says this new spur is to be our point 
of attack. We shall climb it, though the black rocks 
above still seem very steep. 

Last night he and Fred had a hard time. Serac 
and storm forced them back, to ascend again as we 
have come. They camped in the dark ; six inches of 
snow fell in the night, and an avalanche hurtled past 
a hundred yards away. To-day they went only a 
mile and a half beyond the tent, to the base of the 
snow spur, and saw little enough. They have ex- 
plored almost not at all. A great reconnoissance, 
this ! Yet the Professor has his dead sure route to 
the summit. 

The glacier seems to turn on itself, east, around 
the snow spur, leaving a strange gap between the 
front range and the main mountain. Fred still per- 
sists that this leads over to the Sushitna, but we 
believe that it only faces Mount Foraker. The open- 
ing faces blankly into sky. Did they look through it ? 
Oh, no; but they could have. Anyhow, I see the 
foolishness of an ascent by the front range, even 
could we have climbed it. We should have had to 
descend again thousands of feet, either into the gap 



of an Explorer 205 

by a long detour, or down here to the glacier. We 
seem on the right track now. 

In the tent now the Professor's anticipations are 
working jubilantly. Alone with him, he's sometimes 
even companionable. But I wish his silent enthusi- 
asm convinced. He's found the way up. It's posi- 
tive, a certainty ! We can't miss it. "Unless we have 
very bad luck." ("Ahem!" he rasps his throat), "I 
feel quite certain that we shall be on the summit 
of McKinley within five days." I hope so ! Just 
now, over the pea soup, he has confided to mc : "We 
shall spend a night on top. I don't think that that 
has ever been done on so high a mountain in such 
a latitude — why, I do not understand." So, another 
litter of his chickens is hatched out and counted. 

I am really tired. Numbness from my arms has 
extended all over my body and deadened me. When 
I told the Professor, he said, "Your nerves are up- 
set. I have noticed that lately." Rot! 

He has just gone outside the tent to whirl the 
glass thermometer tube. The sun has set over the 
front range, and the cold orange and purple of 
night is flooding these enchanted white spaces. The 
frozen cataracts, ribbed upon the sheer desolation 
walling us. have yielded their flush to a waxen 
pallor of the crumbling, dusty hue of death. Be- 
tween them gaps give down, whither you might 
likewise leap from a peak of the icy moon. 



206 The Shameless Diary 

The snow packed about the edge of the tent is 
beginning to freeze. Soon we can touch the wall 
without a wetting. Well, my mackinaw is spread out 
on the tarpaulin, my poncho extending the tent-fly, 
and to serve as a pillow, too, with trousers and 
sweater on top. Now for caribou, cooked on the 
granite plate over the alcohol flame. Thermometer 
22°, Altitude 7,550. Good-night. 

August 2y. — I thought that the Professor would 
never stir. We were awake for hours after day- 
light, but said nothing. I had nothing to say. The 
sun peeked over the pink cliffs about eleven, lit and 
melted the tent. *There, I was waiting for it," said 
he. Why so long, I didn't understand, unless he 
objects to mashing his feet into boots frozen like 
iron. But I was in no hurry, for yesterday's numb- 
ness still dulled brain, heart, and every muscle. We 
used up all our salt and alcohol frying caribou in the 
plate over the spirit lamp, and still hungry, leaving 
behind saltless meat chunks to eat at noon, divided 
the other stuff and hit out over the glacier snow 
broken yesterday, for the foot of the snow slope, 
two miles further up the ice. The tent, tarpaulin, and 
Simon's sleeping-bag, which the Professor has been 
packing, we spread out to dry. 

On we popped our smoked glasses. The glare of 
this August sun is pitiless, though so far my eyes 



of an Explorer 207 

(which are very sensitive to light, so I had feared 
snow bHndness) have stood it best of any. Swiftly 
our faces were burning and tanning at the same 
time to a Siwash copper color. The Professor com- 
plained of "lassitude," he called it, from the altitude 
and sudden cold. I felt like hell. We kept stopping 
to rest, spreading our mackinaws for a dry seat on 
the snow ; then finding short cuts and safer courses 
around crevasses, poking hidden snow bridges with 
our axe handles. Glacier dangers don't worry me. I 
was drooling to the Professor, when suddenly I 
slipped to my waist down a fissure, and only paused 
to interject, "Oh, I'm down a crevasse." 

We cached our loads, wrapped in a dry tarpaulin 
and weighted with a pemmican can, at the foot of 
the attack ridge. It is massive; rocky at the south 
end, but where we shall climb, steep and covered 
with enormous hanging bergschrunds. 

We had toiled back to the tent by one o'clock, 
and ate the raw, saltless caribou. The Professor 
shied on his share, but up here I prefer raw meat 
to cooked, especially when half frozen. We burned 
with thirst, but couldn't get water till the Professor 
chopped a hole in a sealed crevasse, and stomached 
down, drinking till I thought he'd bust. Not once 
to-day did that sun melt a snowflake. I ate snow, 
against warnings of some terrible snow fever, 
which seems to be the Arctic explorer's bugbear. I 



208 The Shameless Diary 

have always eaten snow when I could, and don't see 
why being up on a mountain should stop me. Then 
I broke a tooth on zwieback, which reminds of 
Delphi's prophecy to Xerxes, when he broke his on 
the beach at Salamis. I've a conquest on, too. 

No King, no Simon, no Miller appeared above 
the serac, as we'd expected, so down the great 
ice-fall we shinned again, the Professor discovering 
an alkali stream under the black cliffs. Clouds were 
boiling up the gorge. Onward, down, we trudged 
toward the base camp. At the amphitheatre, still no 
one ; no figure specked the desert to the cones at the 
first turn, nor beyond. To forget the numbness in 
my feet and brain, I drew the Professor out about 
explorers' quarrels in the Arctic, pinning him to in- 
cidents when tempers flashed up; but he glossed 
them over, and excused all parties to them, mildly 
belittling their human meanings, till I could see 
where his prejudices lay, and understood why, lack- 
ing a ruling mind, he has become dull and gentle 
in self-defense — till at last, and the fourth time for 
me, we crossed that colored moraine range, and 
sighted the cotton tent in the drizzle. Not a soul 
in sight. We shouted. No answer. We opened 
the fly. There were King and Simon, sneak- 
ily sleeping in bags by a pot of cold pea soup. 
''What made you get cold feet ?" said I to Fred, to 
revenge his challenge of yesterday. 



of an Explorer 209 

They rubbed their eyes, and Simon told a pitiful 
tale. Unable to find horses in the lower camp, 
(didn't the Professor know he could never hunt a 
horse?) he'd started up here yesterday on foot. 
Halfway, hearing a whistle on the glacier — ''just 
like the Professor-r-r-r's" — he had wandered out 
there, without seeing any one first, mind you; got 
lost, and spent the night on the ice. Only two hours 
ago Fred, having waited all day, sighted him from 
here, as he was hitting back for spruce, while in hail 
of camp. Deaf, blind, and stupid idiot! I kept my 
temper pretty well at this latest shine. He is sure a 
star explorer. Miller had hit down to timber with 
his coat collar turned up. The horses quit here days 
ago. 

That whistlin.'^ was a marmot, which toots just 
like a man, as any ass ought to have known. . . 
And they have used up all the tea, except what's 
cached up on the mountain. 

August 28. — The world's coming to an end, 
sure ! The Professor got up first and started break- 
fast, the only time on the trip. Seems as if he's 
coming up to scratch, showing real head lately — 
he's so sure of success. We cut the heavy, useless 
buckles off our rucksacks and divided what's left of 
the mountain outfit into the three heavy packs, and 
for the fifth time I crossed the stony hell-rim. 



210 The Shameless Diary 

guiding the bunch in the dense fog and drizzle, by 
what is called ''Dunn's air line," straight out to the 
lone cone where Miller's pack was cached. There 
we made four packs, forty pounds each at least, 
evenly as we could divide it. 

Now, this was my third climbing of the glacier 
with a heavy pack, the first for the other three, for 
Fred and the Professor on that first day carried 
almost nothing. I called the Professor's attention 
to this, when he asked to have the stuff divided 
equally ; but I made no kick, and took my good quar- 
ter of the load. Surely I haven't learned Fred's art 
of sitting around, offering to carry all the heaviest 
things, and ending up, after low soliloquies and 
foxy exchanges with the others' packs, having the 
lightest load. And Fred is always boasting that he 
can back-pack more than any two of us. 

So again in single, silent file we toiled up that 
unearthly avenue. It's strange how spinal shivers 
from what has appalled weaken when you've seen 
the place once or twice ; and how, after you suffer 
plunging into it alone, they are quite effaced in the 
artifice of companionship. The glacier was home- 
like to-day as some city streets I know. Absently I 
counted away all the landmarks, as the snow slides 
smoked and rumbled down the old pink cliffs. 

At last, on top the serac, the human animal in 
each of us began to leer through the heroism of ad- 



of an Explorer 211 

venture. I guess that's always so. I was boiling 
peevish at Simon's squat, awkward presence. Each 
half a mile, we sat to rest silently on outspread 
ponchos on the new snow. Relative weights of packs 
were bruited once or twice, by Fred chiefly, but we 
forebore to argue, knowing that he had no chewing 
plug. Now he aggressively bet that his load was 
heavier than mine. Simon backed him, of course, 
so when we came to the tent, Fred folded it and 
tossed it to me saying, "Here, Dunn, I guess your 
pack's the lightest;" which I denied. So our me- 
chanical genius rigged up scales with the tent-pole 
and an ice-axe. Dicker as they would, my load 
sank heavier on five tries. Fred kept on growling, 
till I said, *'Lord, Lord we all admit you're the 
best back-packer. No one dreams of denying that." 
"Then I don't see how it is," began Simon, "that 
the lightest load always — " "You take a horse that 
hasn't done no work till he's fifteen years old," 
retorted Fred, "and of course he'll pack more than 
one's been worked hard all his life." The Professor 
only looked on and smiled. I admired him. Thus we 
climb McKinley. 

At the cache under the spur, the gloom of the 
lunar-like night haunted the uncertain ice-field as 
we sorted the stuff, shiveringly guyed the tent with 
ice-axes, for tent pegs won't stick in the dry snow, 
and "tromped" (as Fred says) the neve on its petti- 



212 The Shameless Diary 

coats, held down with the pemmican can, milk cans, 
and the two round red cheeses. . . . 

The tent is shaped like a herald's shield, so the 
Professor and I, being longest, are lying on the 
outside, fitting our bodies to the curve. He can't 
pump the Primus oil-stove aflame, and hands it 
over in disgust to Simon, who, as the owner of an 
auto in civilization, knows quite enough about 
vapors under pressure — thinks Fred, who hungrily 
swears at his fussy ways, sotto voce. The leaky tar- 
paulins and things are wadded under us, and the 
process of getting one by one into your bag, without 
wrecking the tent, is over ; it's impossible when all 
are inside, so each is exiled in turn, out in the 
electric gloaming, putting on the Professor's muk- 
luks, which he calls "finnsku" — the Greenland name. 

The tea is coming to a boil. For water, we had 
to melt snow, as after a long hunt I could find no 
crevasse trickle. This uses much oil, and worries 
the Professor. . . . Simon is picking off the 
cover of the pot, and nervously putting it on again, 
which annoys Fred still more — ''watched pots," you 
know, — and soon he will jab the milk can and pour 
all the milk into the tea, swabbing up with his 
finger what trickles down the side, eating it smack- 
ing his lips. Then he will save the can to drink out 
of, as it holds more than a cup. . . . 

We've had our first taste of pemmican, doled out 



of an Explorer 213 

by the Professor from his mussy corner, jabbed into 
chunks by Simon's knife. I'm for it. It's great ; looks 
like mushroom spawn, and tastes like plum cake. It 
sure will stick to your insides. . . . Ther- 
mometer, 22. Altitude, 7,7cx) feet. 



214 The Shameless Diary 



CHAPTER XVI 

WHAT IS COURAGE? 

August 29. — To-day we did not quite wait for 
the sun, and by ten o'clock were discarding the su- 
perfluities which your expert in "travehng Hght'' 
always lugs to the very highest point to throw away. 
I left my binoculars (the Professor wanted me to 
quit my camera. Not I, as I think all his films are 
over-exposed) and the others abandoned enough 
wool underwear for a winter camp. "We need to 
concentrate on food, not clothing," announced the 
Professor, throwing away a sweater ; and we started 
to break trail in the blazing, non-thawing sun, 
through eight inches of soft snow, toward the foot 
of this great spur or bergschrunds jutting from be- 
low the steep southwestern shoulder of McKinley. 

The Professor says he is sure that its steepness 
must relax on its far, or eastern side, hidden from 
us by the spur. This seems plausible, and gives me 
hope, even considering how height and distance in 
this cold, dustless air, where 6,000 feet look like 
60, and a door-step may be a half-mile cliff, knock 
imagination into a cocked hat. Of course we should 
have reconnoitered the slope, but how could we, 



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of an Explorer 215 

with winter coming on, and our one sack of beans 
and one of flour five hundred miles from the coast ? 
We have provisions for ten days, half of which was 
to be cached at to-night's camp, which was to be 
just below the steep place, at 10,000 feet, the Pro- 
fessor was certain ; to serve as our base for the final 
attack and as a refuge in case we are driven back. 
Idle dreamer! You see, his programme is to reach 
the summit in about five days, returning in two or 
three. 

The slope began easily, up the rough path of an 
old avalanche, but the packs were the sort that 
make you wonder how you can stagger on another 
ten minutes. We broke trail in turn; fifty paces 
each, then a rest, then, as we got used, seventy-five 
paces, and in an hour or so, a hundred. No one had 
spoken. Fred's "pass" to the Sushitna still gaped 
into blue sky, and the sheer 1,000 feet we'd risen 
above Peters seemed 200. Resting, we stamped a 
foot-hold in the neve, turned our backs skittishly to 
the slope, leaning against it on our packs ; and once, 
doing so, came our first warning. Simon lost bal- 
ance, and began to slip, slip, slip, as Fred caught 
him, and manoeuvered him to safety, i.e., saved his 
life. We all looked at each other and laughed, even 
Simon, all wiping the sweat from our burning faces 
with our arms; looked at our black-goggled eyes, 
which transform each fellow creature into a 



216 The Shameless Diary 

stranger; Fred a severe person, the Professor a 
funny big man, and Simon an aged clown. 

Furtively, imperceptibly, the steepness had stolen 
a march on us. Neve ridges and humps of avalanche 
tgave the only footing. As one line of foot-holds gave 
out, we had to sidle dexterously to another. In time 
the slides had scattered none at all. The steeper 
slope was swept clear and hard. Steps had to be cut. 

Fred was ahead. He cut, cut, cut, with the cross- 
headed axe, slowly; laboriously balanced on one 
leg, trying the hole in the hard neve with the other 
foot; a new game for him, for us all; hole after 
hole, foot after foot. The slope braced upward 
into the bulging, overhanging walls of a huge berg- 
schrund suspended over our abyss ; higher, more of 
them hung, ending in two gigantic balconies, fore- 
shortened against the sky. At last we could cut 
either to the right (southeast) toward the rocks 
which Fred had wanted to climb at the end of the 
spur (we've been going up its face), or to the left 
(northeast). We agreed, with no discussion, on the 
left. 

We have only three ice-axes. Never giving them 
a thought this morning, all were gobbled up when 
we started, and I was left with the long willow 
tent-pole. It was never meant to balance you in 
half-cut steps that may or may not hold your toe, 
nor to clean out the granular stuff doused into one 



of an Explorer 217 

by Simon's laboriously lifted, stocking-stuffed hind 
leg. At the first shifts in cutting, no one wanted to 
trade an axe for the pole so I could cut. When at 
last I palmed it off on Simon, I wasn't too dexter- 
ous with the iron on the growing steepness. Soon 
they complained that I cut too far apart. 

Yet we had risen. At last! A mountain looming 
through Fred's pass. "Foraker," said the Professor, 
though so small, distant, and snowless. It was two 
o'clock, the barometer only in the eight thousands, 
and it seemed you could spit into the tromped cir- 
cle of last night's camp, and its black speck of su- 
perfluities. Some one said "Lunch," and when each 
had caught up, turned and staggered into his foot- 
shelf, I produced one of the red cheeses. The Pro- 
fessor cut it, and each mouth spit out its first bite — 
Salter than salt salmon, it is, here where water 
is worth its price in — oil. But each cached his piece 
in his red bandanna, and turned to pemmican, which 
pleased Fred, as the chunk in use is wrapped in a 
towel in his pack. 

The Professor sighed — and led on. Now we cut 
steps in regular turn, the leader waiting after a 
hundred steps or so till the others had filed past, 
the man behind him cutting, as he fell to the rear, 
and so on, etc. Slowly we were forced to the sheer 
west edge, under the upper balconies. Should we 
try the narrow shelves that might run along its 



218 The Shameless Diary 

brow, or still zigzag up the steepening slope among 
the bergschrunds ? — which last was chosen to be 
done, as nervelessly and carelessly as before. Fred 
settled it by saying, as he pointed to the right, 
"Hadn't we better take that swag?" as if we were 
driving horses on the tundra. He can't swallow, nor 
can I, these technical terms of alpining ; a rucksack 
we call a backpack ;. serac, he daren't pronounce, it's 
''that steep place," and a bergschrund is "them 
overhanging humps." 

The swag started all right, then led straight up 
over the back of a big hump. The Professor led, 
cutting very slowly, shouting back how to avoid a 
hidden crevasse. Looking downward, the sheerness 
appeared poisonous to me, and I tried to think that 
I'd stick, in falling, on the fractional level just 
below, where loose masses of snow from the last 
slide from this very place still hung. 

As the steps changed from a stairway to a step- 
ladder, the other three betrayed no excitement, no 
uneasiness. Neither did I at first, but I felt both; 
not dizziness, not vertigo, but simply the lightning, 
kaleidoscopic force of imagination, looking down 
the sheer two thousand feet, from where we clung 
by our toes, resistlessly told over how it would feel, 
how long it would last, what the climax in sensa- 
tion would be, were I to fall. As hour succeeded 
hour, I lived each minute only to make the false 



of an Explorer 219 

step, cursing inwardly, but only at what then would 
be said by our civilized friends, their pitiful com- 
ments on this party, that with no alpine experience 
just butted blindly in to the highest mountain on 
the continent. Thought of that angered me. Cold 
feet, you say ? Perhaps. But the personal test is yet 
to come. Courage is only a matter of self-control, 
anyway — and the tyranny of imagination. . . . 

Climbing McKinley with a tent-pole! Sometimes 
I boiled in those dizzy, anxious places that I had 
put myself in such a position with such men. My 
blind neglect of the Professor's silence on alpining 
now reproaches in another way. It's not bringing 
out his lack of staying power, as I thought, but his 
foolhardiness. Yet I must reap my own sowing. 
Once I asked if it wasn't customary to rope on such 
steep slopes, but no one but Fred answered, and he, 
''Y'ain't goin' to ketch me tied up to no one. A man 
don't want to take chances with any one but him- 
self, haulin' him down from these places." And 
right he is. . . . 

One requisite of the explorer — besides aversion 
to soap and water — is insensitiveness. I understand 
now why their stories are so dry. They can't see, 
they can't feel ; they couldn't do these stunts if they 
did. But the sensitive ones can't have their cake 
and eat it, too. They feel, but they can't do. As for 
me, is the doing of a thing to be no longer its end, 



220 The Shameless Diary 

as was in the old adventurous days ? The telHng of 
it the end instead ? So I can't help admiring Simon 
and the Professor and their callousness, which is 
not bravery, not self-control. Their brains do not 
burn, horrifying the present with visions of the su- 
preme moments of life. But it's better so. Where 
would we be, if there was another fool like me 
along? . . . 

The Professor has been a real companion the last 
two days ; intelligent and sympathetic. Probably he 
realizes that this is the final effort, and is making 
a grand play to come up to scratch. At any rate, to- 
night I'm convinced that he's really trying for all 
he's worth to get up McKinley; that this is the 
actual bluff I promised myself to make on the 
mountain. Even if we fail, the worst suffering 
will be over — the days following the first repulse — 
and then, Oh ! how I shall feel for him, perhaps an 
undeserved pity, but it will turn all the tables of 
my regard. I shan't be able to help that. We are 
trying, damnably trying. . . . And all my right- 
eous disgust and revulsion of race toward Simon 
have vanished. To-day we exchanged the brother- 
hood that civilized people do not fool themselves 
into believing is always the heroism of explorers in 
a tight place. I know it's hollow and meaningless; 
take away the danger, and all will be as before. 
But it's heroic while it lasts. And I've often felt I'd 



of an Explorer 221 

die for the semblance of such a thing in this life. 
. . . Forward and back, into the future and 
past, you can't see very clearly in these places. The 
brain works too fast, and your capacity to bear cold 
and hunger appals. . . . 

I am morbid? Perhaps — but this is no place for 
cold sanity, for me, at least; though Fred and I 
on reaching this camp had a boxing-match — for 
warmth. 

It was five o'clock and we were right under those 
balconies of the sky. One way led up, straight over 
the shoulder of a bergschrund, jutting like a gar- 
goyle from a skyscraper. We climbed it; there 
seemed no lead further. The Professor said, "Camp 
anyhow, and we'll see." 

We have camped, and on not ten square feet of 
primeval level. We've dug into the neve wall to get 
enough flatness to spike the tent, and contorted our- 
selves to place within again, I still on the windy 
side. And the wind is rising from the darkening 
white ridges and each unplanetary depth. The silk 
overhead shivers like cobweb, and jam down my 
head and cover up as I can in the soft snow, it 
steals through and stabs. Even in our warmth 
we're numb, tired, disappointed. We have come 
only half as high as the Professor hoped; we are 
only halfway to the top of the great snow spur, to 
the base of the doubtful rocks, to the camp for the 



222 The Shameless Diary 

final climb where the cache is to be made. So this 
brood of the Professor's chickens does hatch out 
dead. 

'Tea or pea soup?" some one has just laughed. 
That will be the tag by which we will recall and 
laugh over this adventure. Simon has just remarked 
this. Thus, you see, self-consciousness is inseparable 
even from this sort of heroism. Perhaps after all it 
were best for us to slide off this gargoyle quietly as 
we sleep — as it keeps haunting me we shall — or 
better, that this ugly white beak shall fall with us 
senselessly in the night. I have just touched on the 
possibility of this, aloud, and Simon remonstrated, 
adding, ''We don't want to speak of such things, 
even if we feel them !" What sickening insincerity, 
as if that could make the snow any firmer! — to 
choke the dizzy sense of danger, which is the very 
thing that's brought us here — as if in this quivering 
suspension over the vast polar world, it were not 
criminal to be acting a part. . . . 

Fred watches Simon fussing with the stove, much 
annoyed. The Professor is scribbling in his note- 
book — inches, feet, and degrees I suppose. How 
warmly the tea went down ! — with dirty chunks of 
the crumbled zwieback, which the Professor draws 
from a white bag and throws at us with a "Here's 
your ration, Dunn." Two cups each; first you dip 
it out of the pot, then when it's low enough, you 



of an Explorer 223 

pour, spilling it on the sleeping-bags. Fred has cor- 
ralled the empty milk can from Simon. We can't 
afford to melt snow for a "squeeze." Then the pem- 
mican — all you want. It's scraping the roof of my 
mouth sore. Simon is telling how to run an auto. 
We are all laughing now. This is all a great joke ; 
there's something very devilish about just being 
here. Every one is in a bully humor, more tolerant 
of his fellows than ever before on the whole trip. 
For aren't we the only ones in all this dastardly 
white world? How would it pay for the only four 
creatures in the universe to be the least at odds? 
We depend on one another. And yet, perhaps our 
devotion is — only the warm tea. . . . 

I have been outside, forgetting to undo the safety 
pin that holds the flap, and nearly tearing down the 
tent — as Fred almost just did. The finnsku do not 
give a sanded footing, and you slip around on the 
inches of the gargoyle, expecting to be floating 
down through mid-air, your stomach feeling inside 
out. . . . Not an acre of the forbidden tundra 
was to be seen. Through Fred's gap, which leads 
even west of Foraker, and circling the dead, whitish 
granite of the front range and its three crocodilian 
glaciers, sleeps a billowy floor of summer cloud, into 
which the sun is blazing a vermilion trail, lighting 
the gentle Siwashes of Bristol Bay far west, per- 
haps, or a slow-smoking island off the coast of Asia. 



224 The Shameless Diary 

That vast, glimmering floor of cloud! At last, the 
silvery lining for us of what may be gloom to all 
the world, an enchanted plane cutting the universe, 
soft and feathery, yet strong and bright like opal — 
for us and us alone ; veined and rippled, dyed with 
threads of purple, rose, and blue, where Foraker 
rises pale with late sunlight, like the ramparts of a 
new-created heaven, blushing a moment for us 
alone. . . . 

I can feel the death-like silence. No one is asleep, 
yet no one dares move, lest he tell his neighbor he's 
awake. A cold blue from the nether world forms 
with the awful twilight a sort of ring about the tent, 
which magnifies the texture of the silk, and rises 
and falls as I lift my head from its pillow of trousers 
and pack. It is a sort of corrupted rainbow, or what 
the halo of a fallen angel might be like, I think — 
the colors burned and wearied out. The world be- 
low is swinging on through space quite independ- 
ently of us, at least. I am not cold, but I shiver, and 
shiver ; think and think of everything I have thought 
and feared to-day, and the little of it put down here. 
And if I doze I seem to be at the very instant of 
slipping off the gargoyle in the finnsku. . . . 

We hang our snow-glasses on the tent-pole, knot- 
ting the strings around it, so they dangle down. 
They look very funny up there, motionless above 
me — four of them, mine the lowest. 



of an Explore!' 225 

CHAPTER XVII 

PUTTING YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER 

August 30. — Not a word as we crawled from the 
tent toward nine this morning, and draped the gar- 
goyle with tarpaulins wet from underneath, and 
sleeping-bags wet from feet and breath. Fred and 
I were awake, as usual, from a small hour, shooting 
anxious glances at the Professor, knowing it was no 
use to rouse his sigh — till I remarked aloud that 
the sun wouldn't reach our shelf till four P.M., so he 
turned over, threw us our pemmican, Simon lit the 
stove, and we told our dreams. 

Just an "I suppose" from Fred, starting ahead, 
settled our direction, straight up, a bit to the right 
(S.E.) — Oh, yes, steeper than anything yesterday — 
houses are not built with such sheer walls as that 
slope began with, only began. Packs were the same, 
numb shoulders ached the same under weight of the 
deadly cheeses, for what use was a depot on that 
snow clothes-peg? We crawled along a crack in the 
neve, where you had to punch holes for your frozen 
hands to hold you there in the crumbly stufif, and 
looked down a clear 3,000 feet. 

Whew! Those next four hours! I had the tent- 



226 The Shameless Diary 

pole, of course — no one would touch it on this 
stretch. All yesterday's torture in fears, regrets, 
from this life-blighting imagination reassailed me 
on the quivering brink of the end. We stopped, 
staggered with set faces, crawling around each 
step-cutter to let him gain the rear ; so slowly leaned 
back to rest, carefully fitting heels into toe-nicks, 
backing upright against our ponchos; but more 
often rested with face to the slope, bowing down 
heads flat over the abyss, to let the packs bear 
straight down and ease shoulders, so the nether 
white glare swam upside down between your legs. 

. . . A hundred times I concluded (and am 
still convinced) that I was not meant to climb moun- 
tains; a hundred times more I called myself a fool, 
seeing the awkward rears of Simon and the Pro- 
fessor; clutching the tent-pole, again and again I 
turned just for the delicious suffering of seeing the 
hateful Below spring upward, as in desperation you 
pound a hurt to kill yourself with pain — to make the 
worst seem worse, knowing that this is not the 
moment when I must slip, but this, the next, must 
BE ; with Foraker leaping like a rocket into the sky, 
the far, pond-spattered tundra sweeping skyward in 
waves, a sort of dullness before the snow chokes off 
ALL. . . . 

And yet time passed like lightning. I could not 
believe the man who said that it was 2 :20 P. M. 



of an Explorer 227 

The Professor was in the lead. It was my turn to 
cut, but he did not seem inclined to take the tent- 
pole and give me the axe. I offered and offered the 
pole, but couldn't tell if he withheld the axe be- 
cause he thought I'd rather stay behind, or didn't 
want to give it up. I was content enough behind, but 
I felt he thought that he was sort of sacrificing him- 
self to me. ''It's all ice here. Look out," he would 
say calmly between most deliberate steps, and stop- 
ping to hack a little deeper. "Are they too far 
apart?" — just the things I should say ahead there, 
hut I was not saying them ; that made me feel guilty ; 
words of big consolation; I admired him mightily. 
Fred and Simon never spoke, except at rests, and 
then horrible little commonplaces. 

Everything was ice, not an inch of neve. It 
seemed to take ten minutes to cut each step, which 
then held one toe, or one inch of a mushy, in-trod 
boot-sole. Nothing for mittened hands to grip. I 
asked Fred what he thought of climbing with the 
tent-pole. "Yer couldn't make me use it on these 
ice places," he said. And Simon — think of it — said, 
''The man with the tent-pole oughtn't to have to cut 
steps at all." But we kept on as before. "It's getting 
a little leveler," said the Professor. It was. xA.nd 
then I would ply him with questions about that level- 
ing, laughingly fishing for more assurances. "Rocks 
ahead, the edge of a ridge, something, see them," 



228 The Shameless Diary 

he said. So there were. *'Thank you, thank you," I 
said, as if that were all the Professor's doing. ''God ! 
I admire the way you take this slope," I'd exclaim. 
And by heaven, with all these mean pages behind, 
I still do. 

We could dig a seat now, on the corniced brow 
of Fred's rock ridge, i,ooo feet sheer down, then 
down 1,500 of black, porcupine-like spires. Lunch? 
No, no one was hungry. As usual we asked for the 
barometer. As usual, the Professor said, "It can't 
have responded yet," drawing it from his belt. It 
was not quite 10,000 feet. 

I led at last with Simon's axe, straight up toward 
the objective rock slope (N.W.). We were above 
the balconies over last night's camp. Soon the snow 
softened to let you step sometimes without cutting, 
then again all was steep as ever. On the east, a huge 
ridge paralleled ours, depressed in the middle with 
a squarish gap, through which a dark, greenish 
line wavered in the sunlit haze — low peaks of the 
Sushitna valley flecking the horizon. So we could 
see on the great range's other side. Then toward 
Foraker, through that gap, gathering all the south- 
ern ridges about the final bend in Peters, and yet 
beyond all, rose and rose a turret-like summit, 
smooth, white, specked with huge bergschrunds, to 
a terrifying height. "There's a high mountain* 

*Mt. Hunter, about 15,000 feet. 




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of an Explorer 229 

over there," I shouted, ''just appearing. You can't 
see it yet. A new one!" ''Yes, sir, yes," said Fred, 
catching up, and we sat down to gaze and gnaw 
pemmican. 

In half an hour we stood here on the narrow knife 
of the spur-top, facing failure. Ahead, the zenith 
suddenly petrified into a big, pinkish-yellow strip of 
rock, offending the sight as a thunderclap might 
have deafened. The Professor dropped his pack 
and ran on, mumbling an order to camp at the first 
flat spot, dashing through the deep snow toward 
our coveted ridge, now so black and puny. I saw 
it was hopeless. 

The yellow strip shot downward, between ours 
and the Sushitna ridge ; down, down, like a studded 
bronze door, straight into the reversed head of 
Peters — three thousand feet down, three thousand 
feet above ; a double door, for a straight gorge cut 
it in twain, a split not glacier-made, but as if this 
apex of the continent were cracked like an old 
plate. Slides roared, the whole swam in snow-mist, 
and two turret-like summits far and high to the 
east, grew gold in the late light. 

Here, where the black ridge leading to the top 
of the pink cliffs should have flattened, all was 
absolutely sheer, and a hanging glacier, bearded 
and dripping with bergschrunds, filled the angle 
between. . . . To-morrow? Here in the tent, 



230 . The Shameless Diary 

not a word has been said. I wonder, has any one ad- 
mitted to himself that we're checkmated, or would, 
if he realized it? How sure is the Professor of 
spending a night on the summit? Looks like an- 
other brood of dead chickens. . . . 

The old cooking, squirming, changing-sock game 
is on. I am digging neve to melt — ^'finest imported 
neve," we laughingly call it — from a snow hole at 
my head, where the kerosene has not spilt to flavor 
it. Fred glum. Simon at the stove. The barometer 
has adjusted itself, but only to 10,800 feet. . . . 

The Professor has just come in from a long 
meditation outside. "Never, never," he says, "have 
I seen anything so beautiful." That from him ! The 
Spirit of the North, like Moses, has struck water 
from the rock. But it's so. I've seen it. No cloud- 
floor hides the forbidden tundra, no mist softens the 
skeleton angles of these polar alps ; only a wan red 
haze confuses the deeps of the universe, warning 
that they, and we, and life at last, is of another 
world. The tundra dazes ; its million lakes, lifted by 
refraction mid-high on the front range, are shape- 
less, liquid disks ablaze; and the crazy curves of 
their shores far below, which may be the dark and 
sleepless land — no eagle could tell — are walled by 
pillars of smoky violet, verily from against the 
sea. . . . 

Last night I tried to hide my fear with sophistry. 



of an Explorer 231 

Now to be honest. I dread the descent more than 
the chmb. I beHeve that there's too much ahead in 
Hving to have it all cut suddenly off against your 
will in a fool business ; and if it must be, there's no 
use shivering about it. If I had any beliefs, I'd put 
myhouse in order. Where this sort of thing leads a 
man, God only knows. Anyhow, we're not on a shelf 
that may break off. Good night. Pleasant dreams, 
and hear me whine in my sleep to the Professor — 
if I sleep. 

August 31. — Alone in the tent. It's about noon, 
and the sun is blinding over the yellow wall. No one 
stirred till late. After breakfast, orders were given 
not to pack up. Fred and the Professor walked to- 
ward the cliffs. ... I can see them now, sit- 
ting on a cornice where the ridge narrows. They 
are no longer staring at the yellow wall. 

Simon and I have been talking. This is how I did 
put my house in order : "Simon," I said, "I want to 
apologize to you for everything unkind or offensive 
that I've done or said to you on this whole trip." He 
laughed, looked away, and said, "Oh, that's all 
right." Tears came to my eyes. Then I felt ashamed, 
then angry. Then we talked as if we'd been brought 
up together ; he of dangers of ships in the polar sea, 
I of old days in Alaska. I said that I was certain we 
could get no further. He changed the subject. 



232 The Shameless Diary 

Fred and the Professor have just returned. 
Neither spoke till right near the tent, and looks 
lie through snow-glasses. "Make tea, and put a 
whole can of milk into it," said the Professor. 
While taking in the bags and tarpaulins from the 
sun, I heard Fred say, "It ain't that we can't find 
a way that's possible, takin' chances. There ain't 
no way. . . . We thought it might be man- 
aged on that hangin' glacier first." Simon burst out 
in surprise. "Professor-r-r, you're not going to give 
it up, are you?" and began pointing to ridges and 
glaciers right and left, saying that of course we 
must go down and then up by them. The Profes- 
sor tried to reason with him. Simon seemed strain- 
ing points, but I was shamefacedly admiring his 
determination, when Fred came into the tent, and 
said, "A holler like that makes me sick." Is it a 
holler? I guess it is, which makes me feel smaller 
than ever. It doesn't matter. We're going to start 
down. . . . Something besides courage and de- 
termination is needed to climb a mountain like this. 
Forgive me, if I call it intelligence. . . . 

Simon pretended that he wanted to lug down 
the twenty-pound tin of pemmican, but we kicked 
it off the ridge, and started descending on the run. 
How I got over the ice above Fred's rocks, don't 
ask. I've heard of persons sweating blood, and red 
stuff kept dripping from my forehead, as step by 



of an Explorer 233 

step, face outward into the dancing gulf, we tot- 
tered over the ice ladder of two days' cutting. I 
talked incessantly to the Professor of the various 
sorts of courage; how easy it had been for me to 
stand on the crater-edge of Mount Pelee, just after 
St. Pierre had been destroyed, because life or death 
there was not in my own hands, as here; and so 
new problems bothered me about cowardice and 
responsibility, which I've not solved yet. Half way 
down, the Professor insisted on my taking his axe 
for the tent pole, for which I put him forever on 
Olympus, between Leonidas and Brutus. Thus at 
last we strung along Peters, each stopping dazedly 
in his tracks now and then to gaze back and up- 
ward. Now at the Professor's and my lone camp of 
the week ago, we are in our eiderdown, on the ice 
just above the serac, in the messy disorder that 
it seems we've been living in forever. 



234 The Shameless Diary 

CHAPTER XVIII 

RAVENS AND DOOMED HORSES 

September i. — To-day, as I geologized alone on 
the glacier, the others dashed below to the spruce 
camp and Miller. I did not reach it till dark. 

That endless, lone walk, past the lower reaches 
of gravel and chaos, out again upon the flat, for- 
bidden tundra ! Generations had passed since it had 
oppressed, warned, inspired, and all to no purpose. 
It was just the same, as must be the world to a 
criminal after trial and false acquittal. Ravens 
circled overhead, following confidently. ''You're 
caught, you'll die," they seemed to jeer. "Can't get 
out of this country before winter. You're fools, but 
we like human carrion. We've got you. Ha!" And 
aren't they right to be so hungry and hopeful about 
us, with our one remaining sack of flour, one of 
beans, and civilization, as we have come from the 
Pacific, forty-eight days' distant? All the meat has 
rotted. All the horses are lost, having slipped our 
dear clothes-mending Simon before he joined us 
on the mountain. Miller, hunting a week, has not 
found them. 

I came upon the four sitting in dead silence about 



of an Explorer 235 

a dying camp-fire in the weird but friendly timber. 
They had only just reached camp, having found 
the Brown Mare far up along the ice, with a 
snagged foot, and so useless to us any more, and 
helped her in. ''I never thought you fellers would 
be back so soon," said Miller in his low voice, tak- 
ing me aside. It sounded like an accusation of 
cowardice. In his heart of hearts, I know he thinks 
us quitters; but that's human nature, for he was 
ambitious and wasn't with us. No use ever to ex- 
plain. 

Now I can think better about yesterday. We 
were checkmated by steepness at 11,300 feet (by 
the Professor's aneroid) with eight days' mountain 
food on our hands. But remember this: also with 
scarce two weeks' provisions below on which to 
reach the coast, and winter coming. The foolish- 
ness of the situation, and the fascination, lies in 
the fact that except in this fair weather, unknown 
in Alaska at this season, we might have perished 
either night in those two exposed camps. Even the 
light wind nearly collapsed the tent, and any al- 
pinist will tell you what storm and six inches of 
snow on that sheer slope would have meant. But 
where fools precede angels, the drunkard's provi- 
dence goes along, too. I don't think the slope we 
did climb would have worried an experienced 
mountaineer, who might succeed on the yellow 



236 The Shameless Diary 

wall above. I should like to see one there — but not 
a Swiss or a Dago. 

September 2. — Again life is a horse-hunt. 

Down the river for miles are only old tracks in 
the sparse spruces ; on the back trail, no lead across 
the crick five miles away. Hunting alone, I have 
the dear, Munchausen-like dreams roused by the 
wild tundra when the buck-brush is scarlet, cran- 
berries are ripe, and winter's in the North. Hunt- 
ing with Fred and Miller (after losing Simon) I 
hear the few last chapters in their life-stories, which 
give the final key to the real manhood of these 
two. To-day as we lazed on the hunt, eating blue- 
berries, Fred told of the girl he had been in love 
with when first he went to Montana in '83 ; how 
he started to travel east to Iowa in prairie wagons 
with her and her parents, paying his way by chop- 
ping wood for them. But he never married. He 
hid his sentiment with funny tales of buckskin-clad 
female rounders met on the way. Miller told how 
after capsizing in a small boat off Vancouver 
Island, he went home to his mother who had heard 
that he was drowned. And, as we ate the sour, 
fermented berries, we gazed into the aching dim- 
ness of the tundra, and wondered if that stream 
bed, scarcely outlined so far away, turned to right 
or left toward the Yukon, behind that gnomish 



of an Explorer 237 

range of hills. And all through these endless, vain 
hours, those eager ravens with their silken death- 
rustle swooped overhead. 

Late this afternoon, Simon and Fred came in 
with the two Grays, Big Buck, P. R., and White- 
face. We saddled them, and till twilight would 
catch sight of one another, gliding into reality, van- 
ishing, on distant swells of the tundra, like horse- 
and-rider statues. The Professor, on a Gray, 
crossed the stream to hunt, knowing no beast 
would have wandered there. And we found no 
more. . . . 

Miller and I to-night had just finished eating a 
mess of cranberries stewed in moose-grease and 
condensed milk, when in comes Simon, and we give 
him a taste. It so tickles his palate, he dashes off 
to make a mess of it for himself, blindly picking 
the handiest red berry — the poison, bitter kind that 
grows on a bush. He almost swore, and shaving 
by the fire light I cut myself from laughing. I had 
been watching a bully, big, gray wolf haunt the 
opposite river bank, for we've thrown the spoiled 
meat right under the bank near camp. I lay flat 
in the brush and studied his big bushy tail, lithe 
as a cat's. He vanished for a long time. Suddenly, 
right at my head, I heard a great rattle of stones, 
but when I jumped up, Mr. Wolf and a hind 
quarter of the meat were gone. 



238 The Shameless Diary 

We've been discussing how to get out of the 
country, for ice is beginning to rim the river slews 
at night. Twelve days' rafting down the Peters 
stream should bring us to Tanana river and a 
Yukon trading post. But northeast stretches mile 
on mile, white with 10,000-foot alps, and the flat 
avenues of the world's biggest inland glaciers, rami- 
fying like the tentacles of a cuttle-fish this supreme 
American range. And it is all unmapped, undiscov- 
ered, bleak and shriveled under the breath of au- 
tumn. And south across these mountains, to the 
Sushitna River and Cook Inlet, the Government 
Survey report we read between chapters of our 
one and only Tom Sawyer, says with familiar trite- 
ness that it is "extremely doubtful" if any pass 
exists. 

That challenged us. That settled it. We will find 
that pass, and most of us for a separate reason. We 
were all wonderfully in accord, deciding without 
argument. Miller, Fred, and I would take all risks 
crossing the mountains, for the very sake of them, 
and the unutterable rewards of discovery ; the Pro- 
fessor agreed, because finally defeated on Mc- 
Kinley he thought, (so he said), he must propitiate 
science by some sure-enough exploration. And Si- 
mon declared that he wanted to reach the Sushitna 
thus in order to attack the south side of McKinley — 
on the two teaspoonfuls of tea we have left bliz- 



of an Explorer 239 

zards and zero weather. His ''hollers" are still in 
order, and our flashes of heroism on the sheer 
neve have burned out and left us frail with the 
human passions of again hitting the long, long trail 
behind a pack train — which is more the test of 
manhood, I hold (if you do any work), than cutting 
steps on the perpendicular. 

Miller bets we'll be only two days going to raft- 
ing water on the Sushitna. I took him. 

September 3. — All horse-hunting but the Pro- 
fessor, who lazed in camp. 

Fred and I late this afternoon struck a tributary 
of the Peters stream far below where any of us 
had gone before, and there came upon the freshest 
horse tracks yet. We counciled, as in war. We 
couldn't trail the beasts and get back to-night. We 
had seven horses already, enough to cross the 
mountains with. We are eating into the last sack 
of flour, and still out of meat, having no time to 
hunt, though to-day this pondy country all about 
the horizon was alive with caribou. We decided to 
return to camp, and argue on these grounds with 
the Professor, for a start to find a pass to-morrow. 
We did. 

Back there, he heard us, and agreed, ordering 
all extras to be thrown away. But I notice that 
the Professor is keeping all his junk, and Simon 



240 The Shameless Diary 

is holding on to his stray overall patches, bits of 
leather, tooth-brush, and the glass thing he snuffs 
catarrh cure into his nose from. At supper Miller 
and I found his college flag, which he boasted in 
New York he was going to wave from the top of 
McKinley, and we — wiped the dishes with it. 

So seven horses remain to die. Perhaps that 
ought to worry us, but it doesn't. They will have 
a better chance to pull through the winter here, 
rustling grass through the light snow of the in- 
terior, than on the Sushitna side of the range, 
where it is very heavy, and we shall abandon the 
others. Also much depends on their physical condi- 
tion, which should be good now ; they should have 
fattened while we were on the mountain. Ought 
we to find and shoot them? I for one could not 
stand by and see horses that have served and suf- 
fered for us dumbly, on such a grind in such a 
land, shot in warm blood. It would be too much 
like murder; better to kill some humans. And I 
hold this allowable human selfishness. We measure 
others' suffering in terms of our own pain, and if 
we're far away at the momentary wrench when 
others die, effectively no suffering exists. At least 
this cowardice is the custom, and such sophistry 
the perquisite of Alaskans, though in civilization 
you will condemn it. No prospector will ever shoot 
his horse. 







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o 



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Si • ^ 

O '^ rS 
-u a; cj 
PI G 4^ 

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•Co;? 






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of an Explorer 241 

September 4. — This evening we packed, and 
were off. Our route lies northeast, along the north 
face of this great east-curving range. Ahead, we 
can see that it throws spurs and ranges out into 
the tundra, but we shall keep as near to its heart 
as possible, right at the moraine heads of its 
glaciers. 

From here our course leaves Brooks', who struck 
out among the hills on the tundra, reaching the 
north-flowing Cantwell River, thence the Tanana 
and the Yukon. The head of the Cantwell breaks 
far into the range, and has been used as a pass 
traveling north from the Sushitna, but we hope 
to find our pass south, in an opposite direction, a 
hundred miles this side of it. 

We halted at a large flat of tangled streams to 
hunt caribou ; Fred stalking toward the mountains, 
Simon tiptoeing close behind, like a comic dwarf. 
Shots crackled under a morainal hill, and the Pro- 
fessor, thinking them misses, bungled the train 
across a willow swamp, where we floundered waist- 
deep. But under the hill, there were Fred and 
Simon standing by a big dead moose, with sixty- 
four-inch horns. They had executed a clever sneak, 
and shot him from a few yards, as he looked the 
other way, quite unawares. *'The old cuss was sort 
o' logy," said Fred, "jes' ready to git off an' rut." 
The Professor insisted on propping up his head 



242 The Shameless Diary 

with sticks, and photographing him as if he were 
a bull lying alive in a pasture. ''Now take him with 
his slayer," said the Professor," and Simon, who 
hadn't fired a shot, dashed in and posed by Fred. 

But five sacks of meat and sixty pounds of 
tallow he has given us, and the kid has cut off 
his dewlap for a cap. 

September 5. — A goshawful horse-hunt. Season, 
failure, being homeward bound — nothing changes 
that torture. 

Simon and the Professor lazing about camp, 
Miller, Fred, and I started to back trail for the 
beasts. Simon's excuse for loafing is that he has 
to wash the dishes; but though we're gone hunt- 
ing for hours, he seldom has it done when we 
get back, and then begins packing the things as 
you put rings into a jewel case, but so most of 
them get squashed. Fred and I can never find what 
we want to cook with at night. . . . Toward 
noon I saw the beasts on top of a mountain, just 
sneaking down the other side. They had been in 
full sight of the camp for an hour, so the Professor 
said afterward. I had nearly busted my heart mak- 
ing the 3,ocx)-foot ascent for them, and met Fred 
on the summit. And at camp they had seen us and 
the beasts before we saw them, and never shouted, 
or started after them! "Oh, we thought you'd see 



of an Explorer 243 

them before long," said the Professor. Da — Chris- 
topher ! 

Toward afternoon we approached the flat, gravel 
desert of Muldrow glacier, named by Brooks, and 
the largest on the north face of the range. Far 
beyond it, out upon the tundra, smoke rose from a 
squat hill, the first human sign for two months. 
Indians? White men who have found our lost 
horses? We lit the moss in vain answer to that 
heartsick expanse, where far away glittered Lake 
Minchumina, near where Herron all but starved 
four years ago, a streak of silver through the haze. 
So we have camped at the far end of the great 
willow flat under the frozen brown estuary, which 
is four miles broad if a single inch ; and three miles 
from water. 

Reaching camp every night now, I say aloud : 

There was a man in our town, 
And he was wondrous wise. 
He jumped into a bramble bush, 
And scratched out both his eyes. 
But when he saw his eyes were out. 
With all his might and main. 
He jumped into another bush, 
And scratched them in again. 

Simon laughs and repeats it; but he doesn't see 
the point: that McKinley is the Professor's first 
bramble bush, and the pass is to be the other — I 
hope. 



244 The Shameless Diary 

Miller and I are "trying out" moose-fat in the 
pots. You cut it up into small squares, fill pans 
full over the fire, and pour out the melted grease 
to harden in old baking-powder tins. The gut fat 
is best, and makes bully "crackles" for eating. At 
last, Fred admits what I have always insisted, that 
caribou is better eating than moose — probably be- 
cause we have no caribou now. Every mouthful 
we eat swims in grease. We use it for gravy on the 
beans. Good-night. Overhead rise the miniature 
hills of the moraine, icy in their depths, but yellow 
with dying cottonwoods. 

September 5. — It's all an undiscovered country, 
virgin to white men's eyes — this bare, cold moss, 
these cloudy glaciers. And yet — 

"I have been here before. 
But when or how I cannot tell; 
I know that keen, sweet smell " 

That's wrong, but how does it go, and what is 
it from ? . . . I've done too much discovering. 
I'm unimpressed, jaded. 

We veered a bit east to-day, following up the 
north side of the petrified Muldrow desert, into 
the great space north of McKinley and the Sushitna 
head waters, which is blank on all maps. The horses 
had wandered three miles back to the Muldrow 



of an Explorer 245 

stream, and Fred and I, chasing them, saw two 
big black animals lurching through the willows of 
the flat. "B'ars, by gum," said he, "else very dark 
moose. They move too slow for caribou." Packing 
up, no one could find Fred's ice axe. (We still 
keep the axes, why, I don't know, unless for souve- 
nirs.) We tore up the ground hunting it; every 
one thought it had vanished through the other's 
carelessness, and no one believed his fellow's pro- 
test and innocent tale. Evidence was that Simon 
had used the axe to dig a water hole last night — 
when lo! Fred found it himself, under a willow 
bush. Starting, we followed a stream parallel to 
the ice, where the Professor traveled so slowly, the 
horses jammed behind a bowlder hanging over the 
torrent. One by one, they took to the water and 
swam across. We tried in vain to stone them back, 
till the Professor, seeing whose fault it was, made 
a grand-stand dash, and coralled all on our bank 
again. He was sore with us, and showed it by 
hiding it so well. 

Noon, and we struck down into a broad silt plain 
heading into large glaciers from the range's heart 
behind Muldrow, and ate our boiled moose bones. 
We mounted a low, grassy saddle, and entered 
a broad valley opening before, which cut at right 
angles, against all reason, through the bounding 
peaks of the range. We traveled between pale, 



246 The Shameless Diary 

clinkery walls. The valley was two miles broad; 
we kept along its southern wall, and toward four 
o'clock a mountain jutted into its middle. 

Making camp, we climbed it. Far away southeast, 
McKinley rose like an unearthly castle of opal- 
escent glass, wrapped in the streaked, cold clouds 
of a Turner sunset; its summit, now seen from a 
different angle, a wilderness of peaks and gullies. 
We stared at it, seeing no better route up those 
steeps ; looked wonderingly, and no longer in guilty 
silence. Northeast, the valley still keeps on far as 
the eye can reach, and far ahead, where a stream 
cutting it at right angles broke through the north- 
ern wall to the tundra, we saw spruces — think of 
that, for we've almost forgot how trees look! — 
stealing upward and dying away on its bleak, flat 
opens. Fred even refused to believe his eyes saw 
timber. 

The Professor has just ''worked out our posi- 
tion," with a map, a pencil, and a straw. Now he 
travels with his wooden compass in his pocket, the 
Abney level tied on the Light Gray (the new lead 
horse — for L. C. is one of the lost), poor beast, 
loaded to the ground with the junk boxes. We've 
lugged pounds of instruments which haven't been 
used at all, and now we're lugging them home. 
Noble apology for adventuring, this science! 
''There's a good chance to use your theodolite 



of an Explorer 247 

now," said Miller to-day, pointing to an angle of 
Muldrovv, whose direction of flow we'd been argu- 
ing about. The Professor only smiled, and never 
touched an instrument — as often before when we've 
wanted an observation. Sometimes as we plug along 
I feel, from what I've seen here and elsewhere, that 
not much will be done in Northern exploration till 
it gets into the hands of some one Napoleonic, 
brutal, perhaps, but with a compelling ego and 
imagination ; away from the bourgeois and cranks. 
We're camped in a steep gulley on the valley's 
right. Miller and I have been digging out chunks 
of lignite from the stream to cook to-morrow's 
breakfast with. Now for bed, and the school-room 
scene from Tom Sawyer, before dark. Every one 
corrals horse blankets, and sleeps on a dais of them 
these icy nights. But we don't smell moldy any 
more. Good-night! 

September 6. — On through our broad valley, 
U-shaped, and therefore glacier-carved, we still 
veer east with the eastward trend of the great 
range. Slate, which hints of the Sushitna water- 
shed, replaced the porous pink porphyry to-day, 
and we nooned by beds of lignite bursting out of 
the ground like big truffles. On the flat of the 
wooded stream seen yesterday, but far above where 
timber had petered out, lay — a crumpled piece of 



248 The Shameless Diary 

birchbark. Bark cut by a knife! held by human 
hands! — and no birch grows on this side of the 
mountains ! 

It must have been carried from the Sushitna 
valley; but Siwashes or white men here? Never! 
Our valley cuts all streams at right angles on their 
way north to the Yukon, and we cross just under 
their glaciers, while the mountains are thickening 
ahead. So I was hot to explore for a pass up this 
stream's valley, though I believe that we can cross 
the range by almost any of these ice rivers, 'spite 
of the Government. But no; the Professor would 
listen to no hint, and looking toward the ice, sighed, 
*'It's following the line of least resistance to keep 
on." Line of least resistance ! Hell ! and Fred was 
mad, too. 

So we dragged up the poor beasts again from 
the flat to the valley level; and camp is by a salt 
lick, a giant clay sore breaking through the tundra, 
where the beasts are swabbing their tongues in its 
cold mud. . . . 

First cut in rations to-day. We're limited to two 
biscuits each at breakfast. Its panful must last for 
lunch, and at night we must ask the Professor's 
permission to cook more. He's taking notice with 
a vengeance about grub and cooking. He used to 
expect us to bring him food like genii. Now he 
loves to chop green willows and insists on smother- 



of an Explorer 249 

ing the cook fire with them. They do give a hotter 
blaze, but if we always waited till they flamed up, 
we'd never get to food and bed. 

Now the Professor is ascending a clinker hill 
with the wooden compass. Far ahead, queer slaty 
peaks, crimped and steepled, seem to choke the 
valley. We've followed it for thirty miles. . . . 
Ice is forming around the willows of our stream. 

September 7. — To-day, two low ridges ribbed the 
valley transversely ; two more large glacier streams 
cut it, draining 10,000-foot peaks at the heart of 
the range, which stared at us crookedly for hours. 
We traveled eight miles, swinging to N. ^2^^ E., 
and killed a fat caribou with thirty-five-point horns. 

Since all valleys seemed equally good for a pass, 
and all were condemned, I thought that we should 
keep on through the low black spurs ahead, which 
must drain into Cantwell River, as it eats far into 
the range, causing what we geologists call ''stream 
capture." I supposed that we were now bound for 
the Cantwell's known pass to the Sushitna. Again 
no; we struggled up that first conglomerate hill 
blocking the valley, and having chewed our cold 
boiled caribou, hit the stream beyond. We followed 
it up. Beyond the higher hill ahead, the country 
was rougher, but not impassable, and the main 
range was plainly lower there, promising a pass 



250 The Shameless Diary 

wherever you wanted. But the Professor ordered 
camp on the sparse willow flat, two miles below the 
stream's ice. We halted. He ran out across the 
flat to look at the glacier, hid by a crook of rock. 
I followed. Nunataks rose like carbon needles from 
the cloud-hung fields. Its gorge seemed less prom- 
ising than any condemned ; yet — "We'll find a pass 
up here," ordered the Professor. 'There was a 
man — " muttered I with fervor. 

Not a blade of grass grows here, and all the 
pea-vine is dead. It's wonderful how spry the horses 
keep on almost no feed at all. "Pretty poor pickin', 
but it's the same everywheres," says Fred. Every 
minute or so the beasts start hot-footing on the 
back trail, and one of us — never Simon — scoots 
after them on the run. Ptarmigan are flocking in 
bands of hundreds in the bare willows. Now we 
are watching Simon chase sheep on a near moun- 
tain, the animated snowballs stringing out in a 
flying wedge as they see him rise like a rock man- 
nikin above. The winter sunlight lies on dark peaks, 
growing ever mightier as they fill the north, and 
a smell of snow pervades the air. 

The Professor has broached a scheme for keep- 
ing tab on the horses all night. We are to divide 
into watches. He cut five willow twigs, and we 
have drawn lots. Fred is to watch from 9 to 11; 
the Professor from 1 1 to i ; Simon, i to 3 ; I, 3 to 5 ; 




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o ^ 

" o 

3 CU 



s/ o 




of an Explorer 251 

Miller, 5 to 7, while cooking breakfast. Then we'll 
start up the pass ! Miller and I think that we should 
reconnoitre here to-morrow, and that the Profes- 
sor is working his faith-in-God-and-self, and line- 
of-least-resistance racket, a mite too strong. 



252 The Shameless Diary 

CHAPTER XIX 

WILLOW BUSHES TO AQUATICS 

September 8. — We went to bed by starlight. Fred 
watched o. k., but the talk at changing shifts, and 
at last a long confab of the Professor and Simon 
kept me awake. It was the kid's watch after his 
boss's. I could see them there by the fire. Some 
trouble was up. Ptarmigan swooping from place to 
place made a noise like a wheat thrasher in full 
blast. 

The blind kid came to me for my Zeiss glasses, 
useless even on a dull day, and now scudding cloud 
hid the moon. "The horses have disappeared," said 
he. "The Professorr-r wants me to go downstream 
to look." I said a few profane things. 

I went to the fire. The Professor took shape out 
of the night. "Why, I went out to make sure the 
horses were there every little while," said he, child- 
ishly. "Three times I headed them off. They kept 
so still, I was sure it was they, but when I went 
over, it was only a willow bush !" Only a willow 
bush! I could have — but I didn't. So, the author 
of this fussy scheme was the very one to lose the 
beasts on his own watch, dreaming at the fire, 



of an Explorer 253 

having kept us awake all night. And then, instead 
of chasing the beasts himself, he went to bed, or- 
dering his orderly to hunt. Simon was only too 
eager, knowing he couldn't find them, so he could 
sleep at daylight while we hunted. And he expected 
me now to sit and wait by the fire, then hunt all day, 
too. We ought to have let the horses go for a while, 
half of us hunted them to-day, while the others 
"found the pass." 

After enough sleep, the Professor's conscience 
began to work; he thought he ought to go hunt- 
ing, and was up with me at daylight. Fred and 
Miller sensibly lay like logs. The Professor went 
downstream, I up, without eating, nearly to the 
glacier, where a strange sulphurous smell, either 
from a rock vent or decaying sulphides, filled the 
air. No tracks. Back at camp, Miller was trying to 
light the fire, speechless with grouch. Downstream 
I followed the Professor, who soon appeared near 
the little creek flowing off the hill crossed yester- 
day, shouting something — he hadn't the horses, so 
I didn't care what. I went far below where we 
struck the stream, then back to where the Professor 
had stood, and right there were tracks, scattering 
up the hill, lost in the moss. He'd welched back 
to camp. Suppose he had seen and hadn't followed 
them! I boiled. 

I trudged the three miles over to the big stream 



254 The Shameless Diary 

crossed yesterday — the logical, hard thing; walked 
a mile up and down its bed, searching the flats 
beyond. No traces : only sixty-eight sheep not half 
a mile off, eating the sunlight off the mountain. 
Returning, there was Fred, driving the lost beasts 
up our stream. At camp, he and Miller were pretty 
mad. What they said about the Professor as a 
watchman and horse-rustler would never do to 
write. But he hadn't seen any tracks at the creek. 
"Rub his nose in tracks, and he wouldn't see them," 
said Fred, who had found my tracks, but instead of 
back-trailing, had swung along the hill-top. "I 
found 'em on a scratch shot," said he. 

"Back here," said Miller, "the Professor didn't 
seem to give a hang whether he had his horses 
or not. He just said, Tell Dunn and King to bring 
the outfit up the glacier to the pass when they find 
the horses.'" "Pass? What pass?" sneered Fred. 
"Why, with hungry horses lost like that, nothing 
but frozen grass anywheres, we ought to have ex- 
pected to be here a week huntin', they might scatter 
so far. But no, I see with only a week's grub, and 
us on the wrong side of the mountains, he doesn't 
give a hoot about his pack train, and just starts up 
onto the ice with his orderly, Simon. H — 1!" 

We considered waiting there for the pass-finders, 
but felt more charitable after eating, and packed 
up, leaving behind for spite Simon's caribou skin. 



of an Explorer 255 

So we drove the beasts up the long, hoof -gruel- 
ing moraine, out upon clean ice. Ahead, the daz- 
zling avenue swung east past a pyramidal white 
peak, whose nearer ridge met the glacier's left 
wall at a tiny nick. Forward loomed a serac ; clouds 
scudded up from the north ; we bungled on for an 
hour in a snowstorm, till the Professor and Simon 
glimmered atop the icefall, giants by mirage. Once 
more we played the old game of quadrilling up- 
ward among snow-choked crevasses in a blizzard, 
each tied to a horse for safety. Twice the Dark 
Gray and P. R. caved through and were roped out. 
Once Fred went under just where I had been 
standing. 

The Professor had peeked through the nick 
before going to the glacier's end, and had seen light 
down a narrow valley. We neared the place. The 
ice rose in frozen combers on a little fan of up- 
right slate needles, perhaps forty feet wide, joining 
in a hundred yards white pillars supporting Heaven, 
which you felt should tremble in the luminous scud. 
Somehow we dragged the beasts to its knife-like 
top. But a pass was there, indeed a pass ! Elevation, 
6,100 feet. Now and again, as with beating hearts 
we started down from this most fiendish zenith 
of Alaskan desolation, the dark chasm curved away 
below in a tremor of sunlight; now, across sheer 
walls monstrously patched with round neve and 



256 The Shameless Diary 

gully snow, quivered an unearthly gold; then, far, 
far beyond, a silver glimmer revealed green low- 
lands and translucent peaks, surely guarding the 
Pacific I 

Save poor dumb beasts from such a descent 
again ! Never were horses so punished, even in this 
land. One by one we wheeled them, switch-backed 
them, stoned them, hauled them, shouted ourselves 
hoarse at them, till the thin snow on the cruel talus 
was a ladder of blood. Unshipping their packs, they 
fell, bracing themselves. At one drop, the P. R. 
lost his head, dashing up and down a narrow shelf, 
his load under his stomach; then with blood-drip- 
ping legs, he balked half an hour, till I thought 
his bones must stay there. Ten mud holes on the 
tundra would not have roused such terror. 

Yet in two hours we came down three thousand 
feet, to the first bite of unfrozen grass for a fort- 
night, to forget-me-nots and hare-bells in bloom, 
and a last winter's snowbank still shriveling under 
a clump of willows that were putting forth still- 
born leaves. Here, south of the mountains, summer 
lasts longer, though the snow never melts, and 
spring was just coming to those bushes. 

"There was a man in our town," we said at sup- 
per, but r made it "willow," instead of "bramble 
bush." Honor be, after all, to the Professor. 

We're safe on the south side of the range. 



of an Explorer 257 

September 9. — Early we came upon a sizable 
stream flowing east, draining the range at right 
angles to its valleys. Miller had left his camera 
hanging on a bush, and climbed back to camp for 
it as we waited. Simon and the Professor drew 
guess-maps of the valley, then played Pythagoras 
very seriously in the river sand. Fred, sitting on 
a log, sez he to me, sez he, *'Look at the Profes- 
sor in them ragged clothes. With his trousers 
hitched up, his heels tight together, he looks jest 
like a ballet girl goin' on the stage. No, more like 
an overgrown boy lookin' fer a job, or a clown at 
a circus, with that little cap, an' his long hair." 

Halfway from this point to Cook Inlet, and north 
of where we left its western tributaries last July 
to cross the mountains, the Sushitna forks. The 
water that carries its name fills the east side of 
the valley ; the Chulitna River, the west, our side ; 
while a low range squats between. Above the forks, 
the Chulitna is all unmapped and unexplored; no 
one knows even if it is larger or smaller than the 
Sushitna. We are either at the Chulitna headwater, 
or a tributary of it — it's impossible to tell, and 
makes no difference, as all these rivers split into 
scores of tentacles at their heads. As soon as we 
strike deep enough water, we'll leave our horses 
and raft for speed's sake ; but that stream was still 
too shallow, and hadn't yet decided to turn south — 



258 The Shameless Diary 

our direction. We were sure it veers before long, 
for eastward we can see the far wall of the valley- 
running straight south from the great range which 
we have just crossed, and the gap where the 
Sushitna and Cantwell headwaters meet. 

Halfway to the forks, Government maps show 
two dotted parallel lines, marking a supposed huge 
glacier — probably seen from the Sushitna side of 
the valley, which has been explored — meeting the 
Chulitna from the south side of McKinley. We 
want to confirm and investigate this glacier. As the 
rainfall on this side of the mountains is much 
greater than on the north side, this ice river, if 
it exists, should be larger than Muldrow glacier, 
even if its watershed is smaller. Simon fondly pre- 
tends to imagine that we shall try to ascend Mc- 
Kinley by it. It is the glacier which the Professor, 
in his old day-dreams of success, declared we should 
follow on sleds in descending the mountain. Once 
he even hinted that we ought to lug runners to the 
top, to skid down upon! 

So we left the stream, and struck southeast out 
into the valley, away from the mountains, over 
the sunbaked rocks of a big moraine, which showed 
that this river's course had once all been ice. Simon 
fell behind with me, chattering confidingly. His 
father makes paint, and sells a wonderful prepara- 
tion (so he said) called — something-"oid,'' which 



of an Explorer 259 

you can use to roof the desert, mend holes in your 
head, heart, or cabin; it's bullet-proof, acid-proof, 
water-proof, fire-proof, God-and-devil-proof ; and 
in every unciviHzed part of the world pioneers bless 
it nightly with flesh sacrifices. Poor, practical, ma- 
terial Simon ! He chattered on and on, as the tundra 
streams gathered into a torrent, and plunged us 
into canyons. He is going to devote his life to 
booming and discovering new uses for ''something- 
oid." This is simplicity and enthusiasm for you — 
and money to be got. 

At last sheer slate clifTs and the torrent's roar 
cast us upward to camp, drenched and sore-hoofed. 
From our hill, we look down upon an even larger 
source of the Chulitna, flowing straight east from 
the cloudy northern precincts of McKinley, among 
labyrinthine sand-bars and lines of saffron cotton- 
woods. 

For supper, we've tried Labrador tea, having 
scarce a handful of the real stuff left. Its ferny 
leaves, red and woolly underneath, taste mild and 
old-maidish, and of the swamp. 

September lo. — Through strangling alders once 
more we slid down to that big stream. One mile, 
and it swung due north, into a great canyon. We 
followed. 

Shall we ever get out of this cursed gorge? 



260 The Shameless Diary 

Again begins the old game of fording and reford- 
ing. All day, we watched that familiar cartoon of 
humanity, the Professor, sprawling on the over- 
loaded Light Gray's rear, as we swung from bar 
to bar, ploughing every few yards through a treach- 
erous channel. Up leaped the cliffs to 400 feet 
sheer on both sides. It was swim or back trail, if 
we didn't like it. Hour after hour the canyon 
twisted like a snake, so it seemed at each bend 
that we must tunnel a way on. I pitied the poor 
shivering brutes, with hoofs still mashed from that 
pass, unable to see the stones that moiled them in 
the milk-white water — each of us on a rump, mak- 
ing two and a half hundred pounds on all of five 
backs. 

By noon, channels were so deep each ford was 
a swim. And resting at noon grub, I insulted fate, 
and have swallowed the consequences. I used Mil- 
ler's pocket mirror to examine some pimples on 
my face (from eating beans floating in moose-fat). 
Then I sat on the mirror and broke it. So, soon 
after, as the horses crowded together at the thou- 
sandth ford, the Whiteface got a bad hold on a 
bowlder with his right hind foot; it slipped, and 
landed on my left, his whole weight, plus the lev- 
erage of the other three hoofs used in scrambling 
to regain his balance. I thought he'd hacked the 
foot off. But on I pottered, moaning, hopping, grov- 







o 

IT. 



of an Explorer 261 

eling, over two more swims, till the Professor 
made me take off my boot. There were the toes all 
right, but bloody and with big red gobs under the 
nails ; and he wrapped them in his red bandanna. 

Still we forded, each time having to swim fur- 
ther and further, until the Little Gray rolled over 
in mid-channel, shipping the Professor, who 
sprawled along, swept into a rapid under the slate 
cliffs. *'He floats very high — from the air in his 
clothes, I guess," said Fred calmly, looking on. 
That brought the man sense to call a halt. Still, 
we had one more channel, and that nearly did for 
me. In mid-stream, and I perched behind his pack, 
pain, mashed toes and all, Whiteface stood a while 
upright, treading water with his hind legs, pawing 
the air with his front. The crowd thought he'd 
topple over ; he ought to have, and if he had 

Fve hopped on one leg to this bar camp. Every- 
thing is sandy and soaked. Our clothes are falling 
to pieces, our boots are worn out ; mine are a cast- 
off pair of Miller's. I've been sitting still an hour, 
sick at my stomach, moaning, swearing, biting my 
shirt from pain. Not a blade of grass down here, 
and stuck in this canyon, we can't get the beasts 
up these stage back-drop cliffs. Fred has just 
climbed them, and reports swamps, lakes, and con- 
fused tributaries ahead — making it impossible to 
travel up there — and no break in our gorge. We've 



262 The Shameless Diary 

no idea how far we are from the sea, what falls 
or rapids may be ahead, whether the water fills 
the canyon completely, as it may, and check- 
mate us. This is making Cook Inlet in two days 
from crossing the pass, as the Professor prophesied 
and Miller bet, with a vengeance. We haven't 
started down this immense valley. Bets are that 
we'll abandon the horses to-morrow. 

The Professor is trimming Fred's whiskers into 
a Vandyke. It's nearly dark. Drying fires twinkle 
in the willows; over one, Simon is giggling and 
waving his wet college flag. We're soaked in cari- 
bou grease; we eat so much we exude it. The 
Abney level is drying in the reflector. We're mak- 
ing sarcastic remarks about the existence of that 
big glacier. 

Miller shouts from the fire, "How late's the bar- 
ber shop open?" And it's beginning to rain. 

September ii. — Not a wink of sleep last night, 
from the foot pain, and the hungry beasts pawing 
and tramping ceaselessly four inches from our 
heads. Right after starting, the canyon narrowed, 
so we had to ford every forty feet or so. And every 
channel was a swim. We covered about a quarter 
mile an hour. 

Most packers will tell you that it's impossible 
to ride a swimming packed horse. If he once turns 



of an Explorer 263 

turtle, he can't right himself ; his pack's too heavy, 
and generally swings under his stomach. You must 
slip off then, escaping the splashy play of his hoofs, 
if you can. Unless he's washed ashore on a bar, he 
drowns, and the pack's lost. 

Again and again all the morning, we just es- 
caped. Your beast stands upright, circling down- 
stream, treading water, ready to topple over, till 
the current eases, or a hoof strikes a bowlder safely. 
We kneeled on the haunches, like circus-riders, 
frantically wigging an ear, banging a neck, blind- 
ing an eye with one hand, as your shivering, over- 
loaded beast snorts in the icy mud-water, and your 
eyes play about on the racing shore line, and the 
whirlpool sneaks toward you, up through the hum- 
ming rapid under the cliff. The Professor began 
to hop round like a puppet, trying to choose fords 
where the current shot you just right to still water 
on the other shore, so you might, or might not, 
escape the foam collars. And all in the rain. 

Of course it was madness. Spruces a-plenty for 
rafts grew in rock clefts, but halt and build them 
the Professor would not. Why? Just pig-headed- 
ness. He said that the water wasn't deep enough 
for rafting. "There^s rafting water for you," said 
Miller at each crossing. '*A schooner'd float from 
here to the Inlet without scratchin'," Fred would 
mutter. But we were too engrossed and excited 



264 The Shameless Diary 

to revolt. The game was capturing our blood. From 
dreading, pausing, talking fast and nervously, wait- 
for the first man to plunge in at each swim, we 
began to dash in all together and carelessly, with 
the intoxication you get from having survived too 
often when you shouldn't. Of course, the slow- 
blooded Professor responded cumbrously to this 
stimulant. He began to value life after we had 
forgotten it. Toward noon, an earth bank replaced 
a cliff, and we scrambled up to the valley level, 
traveling east a while from the river. 

Two miles, and the stream followed and headed 
us; so we plunged down between gravel banks, 
to where it flowed openly over bars all the after- 
noon. Late, a large clear stream emerged on the 
left (east). And again the slate canyon cliffs men- 
ace ahead. 

We've come perhaps six miles to-day. Camp's 
in the rain here, a mile below the tributary. For 
the first time since leaving Peters glacier the tents 
are up. Simon and I have just batted the poor 
beasts up the alder-covered wall of the gorge, 
where some miracle may have grown feed. Camp- 
fire is between two little spruces in the oozy river 
muck, just big enough for three to huddle over, 
while the others stand and shiver. Too wet and chill 
to write. 

One thing's sure: we can't take horses down 



of an Explorer 265 

this river-bed to the big mythical glacier. To-mor- 
row'll be worse than to-day. I've just told the 
Professor so. He simply went on eating, not even 
winked. Of course he's never told us in so many 
words that he intends driving the pack train to the 
glacier, but has often given that impression. He 
gives nothing but impressions; you have to be a 
mind-reader to draw him out. Still none of our 
plans or intentions are put into words, still we 
grope along in the dark. Certainly, we're losing 
by not rafting, to say nothing of the silly risk. And 
if time is no object, it's sure possible to take the 
beasts slowly across the box canyons and small 
stream gorges of the valley level. Any way is less 
stubborn and childish than this sloshy, amateur hip- 
podroming. 

September 12. — Still the swimming game, which 
now seems to amuse the Professor so; still rain. 
Never before has the outfit been so soaked and 
demoralized. Still the canyon, and the second ford 
was a long swim. 

All but Simon had crossed circus-fashion, kneel- 
ing on his horse's haunch behind the pack. We 
turned to watch the kid on the Big Gray, last as 
usual. He was cavorting backward in circles, with 
a good list, downstream under the cliffs. "Ju"^P- 
Swim!" we shouted to him, but still he clung to 



266 The Shameless Diary 

the wall-eyed beast, whose pack slipped under his 
stomach, as he lurched on one side, all under water 
but his waving heels. Simon appeared a goner. 
Finally, where the water boiled worst, the boy 
seemed to get free of the horse, struggling with 
his rubber cape. And he escaped the heels, swim- 
ming, and to our amazement dragged himself out 
on a ledge of the 500-foot cliff, but it was on the 
wrong shore. 

Away floated the Gray, rolling, snorting, plung- 
ing down the swift water, arching up his neck less 
and less for a grunt of air, his nose under water. 
Fred and I dashed down the bar to grab him, 
in case he touched an eddy on our shore. But 
we thought he was done for — with my camera, 
sweater, mackinaw, and Tom Sawyer aboard ; when 
slyly he did strike a backwater, righted himself, and 
stood up bewildered and dripping, a water-logged 
statue. 

Simon, unable to climb around the cliff, was 
stripping to swim. The Professor from our side did 
the same, to rescue Simon, I suppose, while Fred 
and I hugged the background to let the man get 
a dose of the fruit of his own fording medicine. 
But the kid pluckily dived and swam the current, 
his duds tied around his neck, before the hesitating 
Professor was wet to the knees. He made shore 
a hundred yards below us, as Miller dashed out 



of an Explorer 267 

into the current, gallantly throwing him a coiled 
cinch line. 

My pent indignation broke loose. I asked the 
Professor if rafting wasn't now ''following the 
line of least resistance." (Fred whispered sarcas- 
tically at my side, ''Holler about not wantin' to 
abandon this nice pack outfit yet, so he will quit 
it; he goes so by opposites.") Silence. His stub- 
bornness, no sense of humor, unsensitiveness to 
the hurts of man and beast, awful self-seriousness — 
all are amazing. He wouldn't even stop to build 
drenched Simon a fire, and Simon complained to 
me. For once I pitied the poor kid, clattering over 
the stones on the run for warmth. I told him that 
he stood too much from the Professor. But think 
of his orderly's kicking! And still we forded and 
reforded the deadly channels. 

We set a drift-pile ablaze at noon. Right after, 
the river made amazing twists, and having spared 
us in another bad swim, the current grew nar- 
rower and swifter than ever before, butting into 
the cliffs at right angles with a good whirlpool 
under. The Professor halted and began talking 
about taking too much risk, with Miller and King 
unable to swim. I said that I'd try the place, though 
it was worse than Simon's Scylla; that since we'd 
swam so far, we might as well keep on swimming. 
The Professor hemmed and hawed quite seriously ; 



268 The Shameless Diary 

up to now he'd pretended to take all our aquatics 
as a huge joke. He sidled over to Miller, and 
smirked, "How would you like to ford a horse here, 
if you can't swim?" That made me hot. "Of course, 
Miller'll follow wherever you lead," I said. "How 
can you ask him that? His swimming a horse here 
is a question for you to decide, not Miller." Only 
more hemming and hawing for answer; gazing 
sleepily at the timber, and a wonder "if the horses 
can get out of the canyon." Then the Professor's 
inevitable procrastinative, "Well, camp anyhow, 
and we'll see." . . . 

Half the sugar has seeped away, and the syrupy 
sack is squashed flat. The beans are swollen and 
sprouting. The last baking-powder tin had only 
two teaspoonfuls of a brown liquid, which faintly 
inspired the last reflector-full of bread, which when 
cooked you couldn't bite even after soaking. It's 
filled with chunks of green mildew, like currant 
cake. No tea at all. I've kicked the reflector off 
into the brush (we've nothing more to bake) with- 
out obsequies. The caribou and moose meat's 
dumped out into the sand in the rain — at a safe 
distance from camp — since each chunk is deeply 
shaved before it's edible. Kerosene, mildew, horse- 
sores, and a week's soaking make our blankets fit 
to please some Paul Verlaine. 

I'm in the tent, which smells something like a 



of an Explorer 269 

stable — the Augean one before what's-his-name 
flushed it. The bushes about the fire groan under 
wet and rotten socks, pants, coats, all getting 
wetter. The rain falls in great gobs from the yellow 
cottonwoods. The starved horses are crashing about 
in the brush. I can see four sullen human beings, 
hands behind backs, backs to the fire, not a soul 
uttering one word. 

Simon has been hollering once more about 
throwing away chances to climb McKinley by 
abandoning the horses. He laid it on stronger than 
ever before, and the bluff was more transparent. 
No one paid any attention to him but the Profes- 
sor, to whom the kid must be our indefatigable 
hero. Now he's talking about the specific gravity 
of Cottonwood; Miller about how unwieldly a raft 
of it would be; Fred about how it's sure death 
to swim a pack horse more than thirty feet. No 
sound but the patter of rain and the incessant roar 
of this rock-walled river, flowing only God knows 
where. . . . 

At last the Professor's pig-head is snagged! 
To-morrow, so he says, we're to build rafts; not 
of spruce, which is best, but of the big cottonwoods 
over camp. We might just as well have rafted in 
the beginning, and been at the mythical glacier 
three days ago. 

Lord! There's the kid making another holler 



270 The Shameless Diary 

about quitting the horses, offering to drive them 
down the canyon behind the rafts with us aboard! 

September 13. — Early the river-bed began shak- 
ing with the fall of eighty-foot cottonwoods — whiz, 
zizz, crash ! Fred was chopping in the rain at dawn, 
and all day we've been rolling logs to the whirlpool 
back-water, on all kinds of clumsy rollers and skids 
devised by the Professor. 

He was so nifty at this, that as we pawed along 
logs with our hands, bent double in the quicksand, 
I said, "You must have worked in a lumber yard 
once." "I really don't know that I ever have," he 
answered seriously, and offended. Worst was roll- 
ing them out through shallow water and foamy 
stones to mid-channel, to drift to the pool. Simon 
and the Professor of course shied at getting their 
feet wet and Miller lost the first log he guided, get- 
ting in over our only rubber boots. He took them 
off and went to work again, but the other two now 
wouldn't even work with them on. Rubber boots 
are a dreadful affectation ; once I get them, in they 
go to the old Chulitna. 

Through the afternoon every one but yours truly 
appointed himself a Herreshoff, and gave orders to 
Fred, who notched the logs. Miller especially as- 
sumed an air of touch-me-not importance, being an 
amateur Puget Sound sailor. Y. t. retired to camp 



of an Explorer 271 

to dry the dregs of the food, as the rain had stopped, 
and took the Hberty of naming the raft Mary Ann — 
accepted in the face of Miller's suggested Reliance, 
and Simon's Discovery. 

Now at dusk she rocks large, green and clumsy 
in the whirlpool ways. The Professor has climbed 
the bench, and seen nothing in the fog. Yet squatting 
here over our beans swimming in grease, our meat 
fried to leather to kill the fetor, he has found a 
mind again, and announces that as the river "may 
be straighter" from the terrace-top, the horses will 
be driven on another day or two, while Miller and 
King, the non-swimmers, will speed the raft. 
Simon, of course, had to volunteer to stick by the 
beasts, having hollered so much about quitting 
them. I could do as I chose, and having decided a 
week ago, wrapped my meagre duffle in a tarpaulin, 
and said, ''Raft." 



272 The Shameless Diary 

CHAPTER XX 

SWIFT WATER INTO GREAT GLACIERS 

September 14. — After grease and beans, we be- 
gan sorting the outfit ; grub and duffle, wet already, 
for Mary; junk and botany cases for the horses. 
I find the beasts and load with the Professor. 

Everything's ready — when up hike Fred and 
Miller from the whirlpool, and give the raft a black 
eye; wouldn't even hold three men, let alone any 
stuff, weighs over three ton, too heavy to handle any- 
how, and you'd never get her off if you grounded. 
The soaked green cottonwood was pretty low in the 
water, but no worse than I foresaw. She looked able 
to take two men and a few other pounds, at least, 
said I. Every one stampeded to her, danced on her, 
looked wise and shook his head. Protest as I would, 
she was condemned. 

Fred and I piled everything pell mell on the 
brutes, and I got Whiteface ready to be my water 
chariot again. "We'll try the horses swimming this 
channel, anyway," said the Professor, with usual 
evasion of the main issue. *'See how they go, and 
if it's all right, take the ropes off the raft to make 
one below, where there's dry spruce. I think that 



of an Explorer 273 

will be the solution of our problem." If the beasts 
didn't ford all right, I wondered what the "solu- 
tion" to the "problem" would be, but held my 
tongue. 

The Professor on Little Gray, then Big Buck, 
Simon on the Roan — carried down to the whirl- 
pool, but hanging on — and the other four beasts 
did cross safely. King, Miller and I went down to 
the raft to get its ropes, as I thought. Says Fred, 
looking at her, "I'll try her if you will." "Fm will- 
ing," answers Miller. "She'll be a fright, though," 
grins Fred. Miller guesses that she will. "The horses 
is all right, ain't they?" asks King, looking at White- 
face, alone on this side the channel. "Oh, sure," 
answers Miller, unlashing Mary, and jumping 
aboard with Fred. Out they swing, warding off the 
sheer wall with poles, away and free, safely across 
the whirlpool, smoothly down with the quaking cur- 
rent, out of sight ! 

I was mad enough. But the Whiteface had to be 
forded; I knew that and so did they, and I can 
swim. So, the raft's black eye was a put-up job — 
but could you blame them? They'd have been 
drowned if thrown from horses into that current. 
How else could they get around the Professor's 
order for all to swim again? For plainly the raft 
wouldn't have held another pound, and, once ap- 
proved of, the Professor would have loaded her. 



274 The Shameless Diary 

I plunged into the current aboard Whiteface, 
worst water-horse that is. He started well enough, 
but halfway across turned suddenly, swimming 
downstream. Yanking the halter rope, banging his 
right eye, wouldn't budge him. Right at the pool- 
edge I was ready to slip off, when I grabbed both 
ears, and nearly pulling them up by the roots, 
twisted his head up, and pointed it ashore. He 
took the hint, and in a moment grounded. Narrow 
squeak. 

Another swim, longer but in quieter water, 
where the beast stood on his hind legs awhile 
treading water, and we passed a turn in the stream. 
There were King and Miller sitting ashore on the 
stranded raft. A large clear stream met our river 
from the west. Did it flow from the mythical gla- 
cier? It shouldn't, being clear, though sometimes 
ice-fed channels lose their silt late in the year. 
Anyhow, spruces should grow up its valley. That 
impressed the Professor, who, having "worked out 
our position" with a stick and compass, and ad- 
mitted that with this added water it would be 
suicidally foolish to keep on fording, agreed to 
follow up the fork. 

Camp is under a bank where dead spruces a- 
plenty grow. The Professor and I, in stolid silence, 
monkeying with the Abney level, have just climbed 
the ''eminence" back of camp — as he calls the butte 



of an Explorer 275 

of slate left by the creek's erosion. Plainly it flows 
from no near glacier (the mysterious one is mapped 
as planting its ice only a few miles from the main 
Chulitna), but bears off N. 70° W. into cloud- 
capped foot-hills. Yet over a ridge southwest, S. 
60° W. we saw what may be our longed-for valley, 
though walled from us by the bluish outlines of 
immense mountains, in layer after layer. 

It's only five miles from us, air line, says the 
Professor, but I call it quite a dozen. How he can 
deceive himself when he wants to ! I suggested hit- 
ting thither overland, but he disagreed, fearing box 
canyons. He was apathetic, discouraged. I got a 
mess of cranberries. 

September 15. — Raft-building; packing heavy 
logs on sore shoulders, stumbling down bench after 
bench through alder jungles, to the ways. Every 
now and then Miller disappears importantly with 
the axe — he's our naval architect — and comes back 
with a little green spruce tree. The Professor fusses 
about, whittling off knots with a pen-knife. Simon 
mopes by the fire, reading the Professor's red sur- 
vey book. Fred works. . . . 

Two rafts are ready for launching, one Mary 
Ann II, the other, Ethel May, named by Miller for 
a friend of his in Seattle, "of whom," as Bret Harte 
would observe, "perhaps the less said the better." 



276 The Shameless Diary 

Now all the salt is gone. After yesterday's swim, 
only a little brine slopped in the can. We've begun 
on the last white beans, just half a sack, which 
taste slimy with no salt, and we all shy from the 
meat. The Professor says that salt eating is only 
a habit, unnecessary for health or digestion. "From 
the way he talks, I believe he wanted to get rid 
o' all our salt," says Fred, who suffers much without 
it. The pea-soup powder is all slime. The mildewed 
evaporated onions which Simon cooked for supper 
were great. Miller is rendering more grease. 
Shoulders are raw and backs ache from packing 
and skidding logs. 

The cottonwoods along the bars are saffron and 
orange, above on the tundra the brush is dizzy 
scarlet, in the swales the six-foot grass is mashed 
and brown ; only the lean sombre spruce, scattered 
through the colorful desolation, so changeless all 
the year, puts balance and order into nature de- 
lirious with coming death. There are no mosquitoes ; 
now no rain; warm, sunny days, icy nights; the 
haunting sub-bass of the dwindling streams chants 
ceaselessly that being is without end or purpose. It's 
the North I love. 

September i6. — Rotting clothing and rotted food 
all sorted, we launched our crafts. I carried the 
pack saddles, up the terrace, and cached them under 



of an Explorer 277 

a birch. For near two days, we have seen no horses. 
We did not find them now, to say good-bye — or 
shoot. No one mentioned them. We just forgot 
them, in a guilty conspiracy of silence. I've already 
explained and tried to excuse such cowardice. Here 
they have no chance to live. The snow in this valley 
gets too deep for rustling grass ; weakening, wolves 
will kill them. 

Simon pottered over his dunnage for just two 
hours, while I pondered these equine obituaries : 

Brown B: He was the one cay use 
Labor with dignity to fuse. 
Never to curse him was your hunch 
(Though always scattering the bunch). 

But rather plead, "Highness, you err, 
"Please return to the trail," 
Or, "Excuse me, you fail 

*'To note our direction, kind sir." 
For when in homely oaths you blamed. 
He gave you a look, and you felt ashamed. 

Whiteface: He was Brown B's chum. 
Hated work, but kept it mum. 
Into mud-holes he would slip. 
Just to wag his lower lip. 

Sink in the roots? 
Never he; 

His hoofs were made for fourteen boots, 
To extricate him cleverly. 
Trailing, he seemed to say, "Here I am, 
Plugging along, not giving a damn. 
Always last in the line. Don't worry. See? 
And for Sam Hill's sake, never hurry me." 



278 The Shameless Diary 

Big Buck: It was a shame to force 
So old and reverend a horse 
To waltz through swamps, and eat the spray 
Of glacier stream cafe au lait. 
I know he felt it quite below 
His dignity to be served so; 
Yet he deserved no better fate 
Because his brains were not first rate. 
Also, he had a horrid knack 
When you were fording on his back, 
Of bucking feebly, as to scatter 
Your limbs and dunnage in the water. (Noble rhyme!) 
His mates he bullied on the trail. 
And he chawed all the skin off the stump of the Whiteface's 
tail. (Alexandrine.) 

Rhymes are getting low. Still, here goes : 

P. R. Sorrel bore the curse 

Of Simon's botany. What's worse? 

So all the other beasts refused 

To browse with him. *' We're not amused," 

Said they, "Your job we don't admire. 

Get out, you Ghetto-bred pariah — 

Go stand beside your own smudge-fire." 

He was an outcast from the herd, 

But as a pack horse? Oh, a bird. 

If ever cayuse bore a cross. 

Did poor P. R. (At a dead loss.) 

This aged Roan, too, had spunk. 
Sometimes he packed our crates of junk. 
And aptly chose to raise the devil 
With aneroid and Abney level. 
Had he been wise to mica-schist 
He might have been a scientist, 
Yet kept he with the wolves his tryst. 
Unmindful of the fame he missed. 



of an Explorer 279 

The brothers Gray were worth their salt. 
With many virtues and one fault. 
Each snow-bridges would safely leap, 
Unmindful of the crevasse deep. 
And still a perfect balance keep. 
Though to our leader hitched by rope, 
Behind his khaki rear to grope. 
Light balked not on the steepest slope. 
Yet Dark one grievous error would have 
Rectified that time he should have 
Drowned our Simon when he could have. 

At eleven o'clock to-day began the most thrilling 
sport I know — rafting dov^n the snaky canyons of 
an unmapped glacier river. 

Fred and I captained Mary Ann II, the other 
three Ethel May. We rasped and hauled them over 
the gravel shallows of our tributary, and shot out 
between the main walls of the stream, seizing on 
that boiling current. We reached silently from cliff 
to cliff, jammed pike-poles into the slate shelf over- 
head, twirled out of eddies. Entering creeks shat- 
tered the sheer wall. We chose the wrong channel, 
and it petered out. We bumped and grounded. 
We dashed overboard, and on the run eased her 
across shallows. We tugged half an hour to make 
an inch at each shove through the gravel, suddenly 
plunged in to our necks, and she leaped free as we 
scrambled on. 

Bowlders rose through white ruffs of water in 
mid-channel. We might, or might not, hang on them 



280 The Shameless Diary 

for a perpendicular minute. Safely past they heaved 
and roared, like harbor-buoys breasting the tide. 
Sudden granite made gateways, pinching the river 
in its jaws, which quite filled them. Butte-like 
islands choked them, each crowned with tw,o spare 
spruces on high. We rolled between, close to the 
mainland wall, like peas down a drain. 

Still the cliffs narrowed, and we rocked through 
tunnel-like places, cool with dripping edges, which 
made a heart-sick barrier ahead, till, at the moment 
for shouting out, the walls magically slipped in 
twain. We speed with an irresistible, chariot-racing 
turn around a black pinnacle — toward cataract or 
rapid — guess? We only drop four feet through a 
feather-white V, and loosed from the canyon, the 
river hisses upon silt bars — swings us centrifugally 
around great arcs, twirling under the alder bayonets 
of cut banks, that would impale and behead — crash- 
ing us over giant logs that nodded solemnly up and 
down, up and down, as if pendulums keeping tab 
on the river's life in the measures of eternity. 

Choosing different channels, hitting rapids at 
different angles, loitering along eddies, we alter- 
nately outrun one another. We see the Ethel only 
in the moment she flashes past, her three figures 
standing rigid. Then they are beyond by a whole 
universe, which is the ten feet of enchanted, wet, 
black satin around our log. 



of an Explorer 281 

You must be very handy with a pole. You must 
have a hair-fine eye for moving angles, strength of 
an eddy, strike of a cross-chop, depth of foam 
ruffling over a stump. You must be surer of the 
length of your pole than a polo-player of his mal- 
let's reach. You must know, just as a frog foretells 
rain, how many times between this drift-pile and 
that eddy your raft must swing, that the dead wa'er 
may catch its hind end right ; how long momentum 
will hold you, to twist the fore end to catch the 
riffle six yards beyond, so you just shave the bowl- 
der in mid-channel, swinging straight from a broad- 
side. You must be quicker than a Siwash dog. You 
must know the different weight of each log down 
to ounces, the balance of the duffle piled high like a 
dais, covered with the tent and the bean-pot, the 
mackinaws and the axe lashed to all the lashings. 
It's a pretty game. 

Having one cook outfit, one raft has to wait for 
the other at grub times. Ethel waited for us at noon. 
Landing a raft is something like circus hoop-riding. 
You pick an eddy head (chance's are it's a riffle) 
and one man stands ready with the stern rope, one 
with the bow-line. One jumps as the water shallows, 
making for shore, dragged along as he hauls in, 
easing Mr. Raft for the other man, who tumbles 
over now for a haul in unison. And if you've missed 
the eddy, or the current's too swift, no rope and 



282 The Shameless Diary 

pole may hold her; or if they will, the rip may turn 
her turtle. 

Early this afternoon we scraped through our 
underlashings running over shallows, and nearly 
dissolved before hauling safe into an eddy. Luckily 
we were ahead, for otherwise Ethel's crew might 
have slept hungry, as we carry the pots. If we 
divided grub between the rafts, each's share would 
be too small to see, we have so much left; and we 
might never meet again, for now we're once started, 
with twenty miles to the good in three hours, not a 
ton of chewing plug on the beach could keep Fred 
from hot-footing to Cook Inlet. He believes we're 
almost there. D n that glacier. 

When the Ethel slid into camp to-night. Miller 
comes to me and sez he, in his bass whisper, "You 
ought to see Simon. Whenever we pass a bad place, 
he jumps up and down, and yells, "Professor-r-r, 
you're the captain, remember, Professor-r-r.' " Af- 
ter supper, comes Simon, giggling, and sez he, 
*'Dunn, you ought to see Miller whenever we take 
a sharp turn. He jumps around prophesying falls 
ahead, and wants to land and explore !" I should like 
to be on that raft about ten minutes — no more — and 
see the Professor wield a pike pole. I don't under- 
stand how he ever got to camp here. As for falls, 
gravels should have filled up any but a huge dis- 
placement of the river-bed in this glaciated valley. 



of an Explorer 283 

Nothing but chunks of lignite to burn on this 
mid-river bar. Good night. We're getting home. 

September i8. — Shipyarding all yesterday morn- 
ing — the first day I've written no diary. 

A low, yellow cottonwood forest reached far 
back as we could see from the river's west shore, 
just opposite camp. Thinks the Professor, 'There 
is a short cut to our glacier, which must lie yonder." 
He and I try to ford the channels thither on foot, 
but they foam up and twirl our underpinnings be- 
fore we're twenty yards from the bar, and we give 
up the reconnoissance. Yet were we so far wrong? 

Toward noon Mary Ann II was all laced up 
again, and we pushed off. In a mile, we dance down 
past a cut gravel bank hanging out over us. The air 
is suddenly cool, and the gravels are very drippy. I 
jab my pole up into the wall, and though the top 
is dense with cottonwoods, mind you, I chip off a 
piece of ice. That bank was hard as a rock. Ice! 
Another mile, and we shot out among a thousand 
bars and channels, a flat quite two miles across. 
Northeast it swung toward the foot-hills, where 
debouched over a low piedmont what might have 
been a tongue of the old Gobi desert — the un- 
mapped glacier at last! The icy gravel bank, of 
course, was an old moraine, left by the glacier as 
it has retreated, but too huge to melt, even in hun- 



284 The Shameless Diary 

dreds of short summers, more than to form soil 
and grow trees on its top. 

Right off, Simon, the Professor, and I, left King 
and Miller with the rafts, and taking two days' 
pemmican from our emergency grub, headed to ex- 
plore the glacier. All the afternoon we tottered 
through its river's channels, slept on its west bank 
in the cottonwood forest, still miles below the ter- 
minal moraine. 

To-day, dawn found us hiking around its big 
brown pot-hole, where the tiny cottonwoods shriv- 
eled out. The monster is five miles broad, if an 
inch. We tackled the moraine. Sheer cones towered 
fifty, a hundred feet overhead, and we floundered, 
making zigzag goat-trails mid-high on their slid- 
ing sides. Surface cataracts trickled ceaselessly into 
the opal-blue water of cup-shaped abysses, violating 
the dead silence of such chaos as I have never seen. 
A man-sized river roared under its south border, 
between growing mountains and our walls of black 
ice ; dove into the earth, foamed up, and dove again. 

By noon, three miles of ice had choked this 
stream, and we reached a side gully in the moun- 
tains near its course. Here were old friends — 
willow bushes half withered, half in bud, blue-bells 
in bloom, and a last year's snowbank. Even robins 
still hopped about. Straight overhead rose an alp, 
around which the brown ice avenue twists south. 



of an Explorer 285 

We could see more from this mountain than by 
following the glacier, so we climbed it to be checked 
by a ruff of slate at six thousand feet — and a view 
to make your hair curl. 

The greatest of inland glaciers spread below. 
Flat and black, yet unribbed with white ice for 
many, many miles, this imperial avenue sent out 
here one scythe-shaped arm, there another, coil- 
ing in forty sheer miles to the golden snow clouds 
veiling McKinley. Imagine an octopus, or rather 
a mille-pus, to be pressed levelly into the valleys 
of all Switzerland. That's what we saw — there 
where human eye nor living organism has ever 
rested. 

We are boiling pea soup at the snowbank, over 
the little alcohol stove. We are chatting like friends. 
Good night. 

September 19. — Struggling back to the rafts, all 
among the glacier cones this morning, Simon and 
the Professor began talking of men they had trav- 
eled with in the Arctic ; the virtues of this one, the 
failings of that. Companions with the more en- 
dearing human traits they condemned, because such 
were not even-tempered and easy-going. So-and-so 
was too talkative. (Think of such an angel of light 
for the Arctic, spurned!) So-and-so was very 
charming at first, told stories very well, but you 



286 The Shameless Diary 

found out after a while that his enthusiasm was 
not real, and he trod on other people's religious 
prejudices. Selfishness did not seem to be a fault 
in their eyes, provided a man kept his mouth shut, 
and followed his leader in smiling. I felt I should 
like to be on one of this pair's ideal Arctic parties — 
for about a day. 

"Don't you think," I asked the Professor, "that 
the leader who rouses personal devotion and en- 
thusiasm in his men, though he may be sometimes 
unfair and his temper quick, will reach the Pole 
before the easy-going, forbearing, colorless sort?" 
"Dunn, your sort of leader would have to be an 
angel, too," said the Professor. "Well, then only 
an angel will reach the Pole," said I. 

Back at the rafts, Fred had shaved off his hobo 
beard, and Miller had whittled a couple of paddles. 

At once we pushed off. At once the river went to 
the devil in channels. Sometimes Mary and Ethel 
were abreast, with a half-mile bar between ; some- 
times three miles apart. Once, thinking that we 
were far ahead, Fred and I waited an hour for the 
others on a wooded island lately ripped in twain by 
the river, the channel choked with timber, till we 
gave Ethel up for wrecked. We kept on, looking 
for a camping-place, intending to walk back to the 
others with our one axe, which we had aboard, and 
help them rebuild. 



of an Explorer 287 

But channel divided into channel, till scraping 
down a narrow ditch, Bang ! a couple of logs bridg- 
ing it tried to decapitate our load ; held us there on 
edge, nearly swamping. Chopping through those 
logs was like sitting on a tree branch while cutting 
it off — we couldn't stand on the raft — and when we 
crashed through free, and the current took her, we 
leaped on the craft like bareback riders. 

Then suddenly we slid out on a wide current, 
swinging east, around the low ridge which we think 
separates us, the Chulitna, from the Sushitna. Be- 
hind rose McKinley and Foraker, unearthly ex- 
halations, all under the autumn sky of lacquered 
gold. "Look, look!" I cried, ''it's another glacier!" 
and there another Gobi desert did burst the confines 
of the range. 

It was dusk. Suddenly we heard voices on the 
bar, and landed in the first eddy seen for an hour. 
There was the Ethel, and ahead of us ! Their chan- 
nels had dwindled, too. "We thought once we'd 
have to take her apart, log by log, and portage," 
said Miller. It appeared that she had slipped under 
a sweeper, which Simon, standing on the load, had 
hurdled, circus-fashion. It had knocked the Pro- 
fessor overboard. Gosh, I wish I'd been there to 
see! 

The wet botany truck is strewed all over the 
sand. We're post-morteming the day, shivering in 



288 The Shameless Diary 

the biting wind that swoops down from that glacier, 
huddled around the burning end of a huge drift 
log. Too tired to cook, to eat anything but the emer- 
gency pemmican, and stumble to bed on the hard, 
wet silt. Surely we're almost at the Sushitna. 



of an Explorer 289 



CHAPTER XXI 

HUMANITY AND HAPPINESS 

September 20. — Still we plunged east, at right 
angles across the valley, around the bare granite 
hills. The channel puckered narrower and nar- 
rower — into another black canyon. Ethel was ahead, 
just inside its jaws. Suddenly Simon shouted, point- 
ing to the black rim of rock between water and 
cliffs. 

"Tent! tent!" he cried. "See the stove pipe! 
Siwash dogs!" 

And there, as if washed ashore from the black 
mill race, was a smoking log hut, too, and a whole 
lay-out of sluices. 

We whistled and shouted. Two men in blue shirts 
and rubber boots appeared walking carelessly up- 
shore. The very light-haired one — Swede, of 
course, — gave a faint, cheerful whoop, and his 
black-haired little partner with the prospector's 
bulging eyes pointed out the eddy to swing into. 

We landed, waiting for them to speak. I suppose 
that our failure, forgotten in this joy and those 
quick, homeward dashes, silenced us unconsciously. 



290 The Shameless Diary 

"Which way did you come?" asked the dark 
man. *'By the Tokashitna?" That river was a new 
one on us. We had missed it. They said that we 
had passed its mouth just below the second big 
glacier. But wasn't the Chulitna quite unexplored? 
Yes, until they had ascended it this summer, as 
far as where we built our rafts, it appeared. Indians 
had told them of the Tokashitna. 

Then we told them, but quite carelessly, in per- 
haps a hundred words, that we had been spending 
the summer about Mt. McKinley. We asked, be- 
tween sentences, if they had salt or flour to spare. 
The Professor had the nerve to say that we had 
fresh meat to trade for luxuries like that. 

"Yes, we heard of your outfit and plans at 
Tyonek," they said. But they didn't ask if we'd 
reached the top of McKinley. 

"Them Indians at Sushitna Station will go crazy 
when they see you," said the Swede — Chrest Han- 
sen by name. "You're a hard-looking lot with them 
red bandannas tying up you' hair." 

In the tent, they gave us sour-dough bread, and 
we ate it standing in that human smell of old sour- 
dough miners that I know so well; by the long, 
plain board table with pressed glass salt cellars on 
it, the box-board bunk and great wads of gray 
blankets, the leather valises with boards on top for 
seats ; the alarm clock. It was great to feel yourself 



of an Explorer 291 

reading what might be somewhere near the right 
time of day. 

They had been digging flour gold here since 
July; getting a stake, no more. They gave us salt 
and tobacco — a whole plug to Fred — but had no 
flour to spare. Hansen gave me a pipe. They actu- 
ally accepted some of our moose meat; held it up 
laughing a little childishly, saying, *'Sure, yes, we 
know," as we warned them to shave the outside, 
and not get their noses too near. They told in great 
detail how they had missed hitting a brown bear up 
the river last July. . . . 

"See me spit on the rocks," chuckled Fred, as 
we walked back to the raft. "I chew it, tin tags 
an' all. It'll take a h — 1 of a lot of chawin' till I 
catch up lost time on plugs." 

Hansen told us that the canyon was fifteen miles 
long, safe to raft if we kept to the right, and its 
lower end was not a dozen miles from the junction 
with the Sushitna ! Last June it had taken them two 
weeks in high water to rope its length up to there. 

But we haven't made the forks to-night. We ran 
the canyon in two hours. Camped here on the bar, 
it's very cold. Yet we're only a hundred miles from 
the Sushitna trading store — civilization. 

September 21. — Right at the start to-day, the 
river hurled us through a whole archipelago — once 



292 The Shameless Diary 

staid, tree-covered flats, which it had lately severed 
into town-lots. We dodged Mary Ann among shreds 
of jungle quivering in the white water, slapped her 
against the logs, till she buried a side, and the dizzy 
angle freed us. Fred and I hopped about, giving 
orders, changing them, cursing each other after 
every escape. 

We had luck, but Ethel didn't. Once, where we 
landed to wait for her, first thing we know, Simon 
comes kiting down the bar after the axe. Back half 
a mile, we found Ethel hung up slanting on a wil- 
low snag, water washing over the junk boxes, the 
Professor and Miller nursing their dry feet on her 
up-turned edge. Fred jumped in and hacked them 
out, and in a half hour, both rafts abreast, we swung 
out upon the broad, even channel of the Chulitna 
and Sushitna pulling together for Cook Inlet. 
Rafting was easy now. 

Here we sit on our load, raised on two logs in 
the middle of the raft and covered with the tent. 
Now and then we wonder which channel to take 
among the large islands, and the river chooses for 
us. Sometimes we loiter along shore, roused to 
paddle furiously when the steely water hustles on 
suddenly, and we scrape over shallows. But chan- 
nels make little difference now; every lead has 
water enough. 

Fred is staining the river with tobacco juice; I 



of an Explorer 293 

am smoking Chrest Hansen's pipe. We swing 
slowly round and round, as air bubbles hiss up from 
the gray-green flood. *'See the view change with- 
out you movin'," says Fred; and after silent in- 
tervals, "Beautiful! beautiful! beautiful!" They 
seem asleep on the other raft; the Professor, 
anyway. 

Northwest, McKinley, Foraker, and the coronet- 
like Titan between which we discovered, rise ever 
higher over these limitless lowlands. Clean blue 
shadows glaze the deeps of the saffron cottonwoods. 
Riffles upon shallows far ahead snuffle delicately 
and distinct through the warm sunlight of Indian 
summer. We dip our paddles with neat care. We 
live utterly in the present. 

I wonder, shall I ever return to so glorious a 
land, to such happiness? 

September 24. — This afternoon, we began to bet 
on the exact time by the Professor's watch when 
Sushitna Station would loom up. He and Miller stud- 
ied every eddy. A long one, said they, stretched just 
above the Station, into which flowed Yentna river, 
which they had ascended to meet us last July. We 
were standing on our loads, shading our eyes, 
speaking very seldom. 

Toward four o'clock, a ruined cabin slid out 
upon a terrace with a clay bank under, and below 



294 The Shameless Diary 

dories were ranked ashore in a long stretch of 
dead water. Then weathered huts were tumbled 
in long, dead grass sloping evenly to the river. 
Spires of blue smoke rose, and on an island opposite 
appeared frowsy Siwash huts, the whine of dogs, 
savage shouts, scarlet cloth on the heads of moving 
squaws. 

A tall old man strolled up-shore with four 
white men's dogs. We pulled in toward him, and 
asked him — not if Jack, whom we had sent back so 
sick just eight weeks ago, had ever reached here — 
but the news of the world. He knew of nothing 
since August lo. 

"But yer know the Pope's dead?" he drawled. 
"And them cardinals held a sort of political con- 
vention, where Gibbons he acted as a kind of boss, 
showin' them the American way, and they elected 
a new Pope, his man. Roosevelt, he's agreed to 
complain to the Tsar of Rooshia about them mas- 
sacred Jews, and some one's killed that Queen 
Dragon of Servia, try in' to jump her claim to the 
throne. And Rooshia's goin' to fight the Japs. The' 
ain't much happened this summer." His heavy boots 
clattered over the stones as he followed us, but he 
did not look at our open mouths, or ask us one 
word. . . . 

We're sitting about a camp-fire in the dark on 
the beach just below Shorty's store. He is on a trip 



of an Explorer 295 

to Tyonek, and his squaw wife handles his keys. 
Prospectors don't usually care for squaw-men, ex- 
cept Shorty, who is nearly seven feet tall. The wife 
walks about aggressively timid, maintaining the re- 
spect of all these prospectors, which she has mas- 
tered. Her eight children she guards in her cabin. 
She has been selling Simon candy of the Lower 
Silurian Age. 

Nearly all the cabins are occupied. Prospectors 
are coming into this valley for the first time. No 
strike has been made, no, but it's the last valley in 
Alaska still untouched. They have spent the late 
summer boating up their years' supplies from the 
head of the Inlet. Some have dogs, some hope to 
get them from somewhere before winter. They are 
the bedrock Alaskan article, the men to be first on 
the claims if an Eldorado is struck. They start their 
stampede the winter before, not in the spring, which 
is the tenderfoot way. Each has just waked from 
failure — in a rush camp, or looking for daily wages 
in Valdez. Again they take up the old, relentless, 
dream-trail to riches through the desolate and un- 
certain North. Human beings, at least, men after 
my heart! In Arizona, Oregon, South Africa, the 
Philippines, each has more than once risked his poor 
all, and lost, always lost. But now the Eldorado is 
at hand, in this Sushitna valley, here is the place. 
They may hand-sled their outfits up the river in 



296 The Shameless Diary 

March, making many double trips; but to what 
point each is still undecided. There's plenty of time 
yet to think. 

They handle the few rocks I have picked up, ask- 
ing the simple, penetrating questions of men who 
have learned geology only in the field, and with one 
idea, placer gold. They talk of porphyry, bull gran- 
ite, and gravel wash. They trace wise, slow fingers 
across our sketch maps, asking advice where they 
should go, like children. But if we have not seen 
such and such a schist on this or that creek, with 
bedrock so deep, it settles that Eldorado. Climbing 
McKinley does not interest them at all. . . . 

A tall, gaunt man has just come from prospect- 
ing in Luzon. He is cursing that country with great 
ingenuity. It's worthless, apparently, because you 
cannot grow oats there ; corn, either, which he took 
out to settle the fate of the tropics with. There the 
natives are so thick and starved they search the 
mountains at night with candles for lizards to eat, 
till the hills seem alive with fire-flies. 

Silently we look up to Mount Sushitna, rising 
clear and lone over the glossy river and the un- 
known wilderness, which is bright with uncertain 
auroras. 

A shadowy figure approaches. I hear the Pro- 
fessor's voice in my ear. He is talking about Jack. 
He has heard that some such man, still ill, out of 



of an Explorer 297 

grub, with stories of many wrecks from a raft on 
the Keechatna, reached here in August. He took 
our boat to Tyonek. That is very annoying. How- 
ever, the Professor has secured another craft, and 
to-morrow we shall follow to the sea. 



THE END 



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